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By Root 1896 0

I had become in time familiar with it; our memory of dreams may become lasting, if they repeat themselves often enough. And long after my dream had ended, I remained tormented by that kiss which Albertine had told me she had given in words which I thought I could still hear. And indeed they must have passed very close to my ear since it was I myself who had uttered them. All day long, I continued to talk to Albertine; I questioned her, I forgave her, I made up for my forgetfulness of the things which I had always meant to say to her during her life. And all of a sudden I was startled by the thought that the creature invoked by memory to whom all these remarks were addressed no longer bore any relation to reality, that death had destroyed the various parts of the face to which the continual thrust of the will to live, now abolished, had alone given the unity of a person.

At other times, without my having dreamed, as soon as I awoke I felt that the wind had changed in me; it was blowing coldly and steadily from another direction, issuing from the remotest past, bringing back to me the sound of a clock striking far-off hours, of the whistle of departing trains which I did not ordinarily hear. One day I tried to interest myself in a book. I reopened a novel by Bergotte of which I had been especially fond. Its congenial characters appealed to me greatly, and very soon, reconquered by the charm of the book, I began to hope, as for a personal pleasure, that the wicked woman might be punished, while my eyes grew moist when the happiness of the young lovers was assured. “But then,” I exclaimed in despair, “I cannot conclude, from the fact that I attach so much importance to what Albertine may have done, that her personality is something real which cannot be destroyed, that I shall find her one day in her own likeness in heaven, if I invoke with so many entreaties, await with such impatience, welcome with tears the success of a person who has never existed except in Bergotte’s imagination, whom I have never seen, whose appearance I am at liberty to imagine as I please!” Besides, in this novel, there were seductive girls, amorous correspondences, deserted paths in which lovers meet, and all this, reminding me that one may love clandestinely, revived my jealousy, as though Albertine had still been able to stroll along deserted paths. And the novel also pictured a man who after fifty years meets a woman whom he loved in her youth, fails to recognise her, is bored in her company. And this reminded me that love does not last for ever and distressed me as though I were destined to be parted from Albertine and to meet her again with indifference in my old age. If I caught sight of a map of France, my fearful eyes took care not to fall upon Touraine so that I might not be jealous, nor, so that I might not be miserable, upon Normandy, where would certainly be indicated at least Balbec and Doncières, between which I could situate all those places we had traversed so many times together. In the midst of other names of towns or villages of France, names which were merely visible or audible, the name of Tours, for instance, seemed to be differently composed, to be made up, not of intangible images, but of venomous substances which acted instantaneously on my heart, making it beat faster and more painfully. And if this force extended to certain names, making them so different from the rest, how, when I stayed closer to myself, when I confined myself to Albertine herself, could I be astonished that this force which I found irresistible, and to produce which any other woman might have served, had been the result of an entanglement, of a bringing into contact of dreams, desires, habits, affections, with the requisite conjunction of alternating pains and pleasures? And this continued her life in death, memory being sufficient to sustain the reality of life, which is mental. I recalled Albertine alighting from a railway carriage and telling me that she wanted to go to Saint-Mars-le-Vetu, and I saw her again before that, with her “polo” pulled down