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By Root 1456 0

this pleasure at a very low value now that it was assured. But, inside, my will did not for a moment share this illusion, that will which is the persevering and unalterable servant of our successive personalities; hidden away in the shadow, despised, downtrodden, untiringly faithful, toiling incessantly, and with no thought for the variability of the self, to ensure that the self may never lack what is needed. While, at the moment when we are about to start on an eagerly awaited journey, our intelligence and our sensibility begin to ask themselves whether it is really worth the trouble, the will, knowing that those lazy masters would at once begin to consider that journey the most wonderful experience if it became impossible for us to undertake it, leaves them arguing outside the station, vying with each other in their hesitations; but it busies itself with buying the tickets and putting us into the carriage before the train starts. It is as invariable as the intelligence and the sensibility are fickle, but since it is silent, gives no account of its actions, it seems almost non-existent; it is by its dogged determination that the other constituent parts of our personality are led, but without seeing it, whereas they distinguish clearly all their own uncertainties. So my intelligence and my sensibility began a discussion as to the real value of the pleasure that there would be in knowing Albertine, while I studied in the glass vain and perishable attractions which they would have preserved intact for use on some other occasion. But my will would not let the hour pass at which I must start, and it was Elstir’s address that it called out to the driver. My intelligence and my sensibility were at liberty, now that the die was cast, to think this a pity. If my will had given the man a different address, they would have been properly had.

When I arrived at Elstir’s a few minutes later, I thought at first that Mlle Simonet was not in the studio. There was certainly a girl sitting there in a silk frock, bareheaded, but one whose marvellous hair, whose nose, whose complexion, meant nothing to me, in whom I did not recognise the human entity that I had extracted from a young cyclist in a polo-cap strolling past between myself and the sea. Nevertheless it was Albertine. But even when I knew it to be her, I gave her no thought. On entering any social gathering, when one is young, one loses consciousness of one’s old self, one becomes a different man, every drawing-room being a fresh universe in which, coming under the sway of a new moral perspective, we fasten our attention, as if they were to matter to us for all time, on people, dances, card-tables, all of which we shall have forgotten by the morning. Obliged to follow, if I was to arrive at the goal of conversation with Albertine, a route in no way of my own planning, which first brought me to a halt in front of Elstir, passed by other groups of guests to whom I was presented, then along the buffet table, at which I was offered, and where I ate, a strawberry tart or two, while I listened, motionless, to the music that had begun in another part of the room, I found myself giving to these various incidents the same importance as to my introduction to Mlle Simonet, an introduction which was now nothing more than one among several such incidents, having entirely forgotten that it had been, but a few minutes since, my sole object in coming there. But is it not thus, in the bustle of daily life, with every true happiness, every great sorrow? In a room full of other people we receive from the woman we love the answer, auspicious or fatal, which we have been awaiting for the last year. But we must go on talking, ideas come flocking one after another, unfolding a smooth surface which is pricked now and then at the very most by a dull throb from the memory, infinitely more profound but very narrow, that misfortune has come upon us. If, instead of misfortune, it is happiness, it may be that not until many years have elapsed will we recall that the most important event in our emotional life