more precious and less frequent. My parents did not give me enough money for me to be able to buy expensive things. I thought of a big vase of old Chinese porcelain which had been left to me by aunt Léonie, and of which Mamma prophesied daily that Françoise would come to her and say “Oh, it’s all come to pieces!” and that would be the end of it. Would it not be wiser, in that case, to part with it, to sell it so as to be able to give Gilberte all the pleasure I could. I felt sure that I could easily get a thousand francs for it. I had it wrapped up; I had grown so used to it that I had ceased altogether to notice it: parting with it had at least the advantage of making me realise what it was like. I took it with me on my way to the Swanns’, and, giving the driver their address, told him to go by the Champs-Elysées, at one end of which was the shop of a big dealer in oriental objects whom my father knew. Greatly to my surprise he offered me there and then not one thousand but ten thousand francs for the vase. I took the notes with rapture: every day, for a whole year, I could smother Gilberte in roses and lilac. When I left the shop and got back into the carriage the driver (naturally enough, since the Swanns lived out by the Bois) instead of taking the ordinary way began to drive along the Avenue des Champs-Elysées. He had just passed the corner of the Rue de Berri when, in the failing light, I thought I saw, close to the Swanns’ house but going in the other direction, away from it, Gilberte, who was walking slowly, though with a firm step, by the side of a young man with whom she was conversing and whose face I could not distinguish. I stood up in the cab, meaning to tell the driver to stop; then hesitated. The strolling couple were already some way away, and the two parallel lines which their leisurely progress was quietly drawing were on the verge of disappearing in the Elysian gloom. A moment later, I had reached Gilberte’s door. I was received by Mme Swann. “Oh! she will be sorry!” was my greeting, “I can’t think why she isn’t in. But she was complaining of the heat just now after a lesson, and said she might go out for a breath of fresh air with one of her girl friends.” “I thought I saw her in the Avenue des Champs-Elysées.” “Oh, I don’t think it can have been her. Anyhow, don’t mention it to her father; he doesn’t approve of her going out at this time of night. Must you go? Good-bye.” I left her, told my driver to go back the same way, but found no trace of the two walkers. Where had they been? What were they saying to one another in the darkness with that confidential air?
I returned home, despairingly clutching my windfall of ten thousand francs, which would have enabled me to arrange so many pleasant surprises for that Gilberte whom now I had made up my mind never to see again. No doubt my call at the dealer’s had brought me happiness by allowing me to hope that in future, whenever I saw my beloved, she would be pleased with me and grateful. But if I had not called there, if the carriage had not taken the Avenue des Champs-Elysées, I should not have seen Gilberte with that young man. Thus a single action may have two contradictory effects, and the misfortune that it engenders cancel the good fortune it had brought one. What had happened to me was the opposite of what so frequently occurs. We desire some pleasure, and the material means of obtaining it are lacking. “It is sad,” La Bruyère tells us, “to love without an ample fortune.” There is nothing for it but to try to eradicate little by little our desire for that pleasure. In my case, however, the material means had been forthcoming, but at the same moment, if not by a logical effect, at any rate as a fortuitous consequence of that initial success, my pleasure had been snatched from me. As, for that matter, it seems as though it must always be. As a rule, however, not on the same evening as we have acquired what makes it possible. Usually, we continue to struggle and hope for a little longer. But happiness can never be achieved. If we succeed in overcoming