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By Root 1679 0

green water stretched to my feet; on the opposite shore it washed round the base of an oriental church, and beyond it houses which existed already in the fourteenth century, so that to go across to them would have been to ascend the stream of time. This dream in which nature had learned from art, in which the sea had turned Gothic, this dream in which I longed to attain, in which I believed that I was attaining to the impossible, was one that I felt I had often dreamed before. But as it is the nature of what we imagine in sleep to multiply itself in the past, and to appear, even when new, to be familiar, I supposed that I was mistaken. I noticed, however, that I did indeed frequently have this dream.

The diminutions, too, that characterise sleep were reflected in mine, but in a symbolic manner; I could not in the darkness make out the faces of the friends who were in the room, for we sleep with our eyes shut; I, who could carry on endless verbal arguments with myself while I dreamed, as soon as I tried to speak to these friends felt the words stick in my throat, for we do not speak distinctly in our sleep; I wanted to go to them, and I could not move my limbs, for we do not walk when we are asleep either; and, suddenly, I was ashamed to be seen by them, for we sleep without our clothes. So, my eyes blinded, my lips sealed, my limbs fettered, my body naked, the image of sleep which my sleep itself projected had the appearance of those great allegorical figures where Giotto has portrayed Envy with a serpent in her mouth, and which Swann had given me.

Saint-Loup came to Paris for a few hours only. While affirming that he had not yet had an opportunity of speaking to his cousin, “She’s not at all nice, Oriane,” he told me with innocent self-betrayal. “She’s not my old Oriane any longer, they’ve gone and changed her, I assure you it’s not worth while bothering your head about her. You pay her far too great a compliment. You wouldn’t care to meet my cousin Poictiers?” he went on, without stopping to reflect that this could not possibly give me any pleasure. “There’s an intelligent young woman whom you’d like. She’s married to my cousin, the Duc de Poictiers, who is a good fellow, but a bit slow for her. I’ve told her about you. She said I was to bring you to see her. She’s much prettier than Oriane, and younger, too. She’s a really nice person, you know, a really excellent person.” Then there were expressions newly—and all the more ardently—adopted by Robert, which meant that the person in question had a delicate nature. “I don’t go so far as to say she’s a Dreyfusard, you must remember her background; still, she did say to me: ‘If he was innocent, how ghastly for him to have been shut up on Devil’s Island.’ You see what I mean, don’t you? And then she’s the sort of woman who does a tremendous lot for her old governesses; she’s given orders that they’re never to be made to use the servants’ staircase. She’s a very good sort, I assure you. Oriane doesn’t really like her because she feels she’s more intelligent.”

Although completely absorbed in the pity which she felt for one of the Guermantes footmen—who could not go to see his girl, even when the Duchess was out, because it would immediately have been reported to her from the lodge—Françoise was heartbroken at not having been in the house at the moment of Saint-Loup’s visit, but this was because now she herself paid visits too. She never failed to go out on the days when I most needed her. It was always to see her brother, her niece and, more particularly, her own daughter, who had recently come to live in Paris. The family nature of these visits itself increased the irritation that I felt at being deprived of her services, for I foresaw that she would speak of them as being among those duties which could not be avoided, according to the laws laid down at Saint-André-des-Champs. And so I never listened to her excuses without an ill humour which was highly unjust to her, and was brought to a head by Françoise’s way of saying not: “I’ve been to see my brother,” or “I’ve been