Swann's Way - Marcel Proust [113]
I felt it to be important that she should not leave the church before I had been able to look at her for long enough, reminding myself that for years past I had regarded the sight of her as a thing eminently to be desired, and I kept my eyes fixed on her, as though by gazing at her I should be able to carry away and store up inside myself the memory of that prominent nose, those red cheeks, of all those details which struck me as so many precious, authentic and singular items of information with regard to her face. And now that all the thoughts I brought to bear upon it (especially, perhaps—a form of the instinct of self-preservation with which we guard everything that is best in ourselves—the familiar desire not to have been disappointed) made me think it beautiful, and I set her once again (since they were one and the same person, this lady who sat before me and that Duchesse de Guermantes whom I had hitherto conjured up in my imagination) apart from that common run of humanity with which the actual sight of her in the flesh had made me for a moment confound her, I grew indignant when I heard people saying in the congregation round me: “She’s better looking than Mme Sazerat” or “than Mlle Vinteuil,” as though she was in any way comparable with them. And my eyes resting upon her fair hair, her blue eyes, the lines of her neck, and overlooking the features which might have reminded me of the faces of other women, I cried out within myself as I admired this deliberately unfinished sketch: “How lovely she is! What true nobility! It is indeed a proud Guermantes, the descendant of Geneviève de Brabant, that I have before me!” And the attention which I focused on her face succeeded in isolating it so completely that today, when I call that marriage ceremony to mind, I find it impossible to visualise any single person who was present except her, and the verger who answered me in the affirmative when I inquired whether the lady was indeed Mme de Guermantes. But I can see her still quite clearly, especially at the moment when the procession filed into the sacristy, which was lit up by the intermittent warm sunshine of a windy and rainy day and in which Mme de Guermantes found herself in the midst of all those Combray people whose names she did not even know, but whose inferiority proclaimed her own supremacy too loudly for her not to feel sincerely benevolent towards them, and whom she might count on impressing even more forcibly by virtue of her simplicity and graciousness. And so, since she could not bring into play the deliberate glances, charged with a definite meaning, which one directs towards people one knows, but must allow her absent-minded thoughts to flow continuously from her eyes in a stream of blue light which she was powerless to contain, she was anxious not to embarrass or to appear to be disdainful of those humbler mortals whom it encountered on its way, on whom it was constantly falling. I can still see, above her mauve scarf, puffed and silky, the gentle astonishment in her eyes, to which she had added, without daring to address it to anyone in particular, but so that everyone might enjoy his share of it, a rather shy smile as of a sovereign lady who seems to be making an apology for her presence among the vassals whom she loves. This smile fell upon me, who had never taken my eyes off her. And remembering the glance which she had let fall upon me during mass, blue as a ray of sunlight that had penetrated the window of Gilbert the Bad, I said to myself: “She must have taken notice of me.” I fancied that I had found favour in her eyes, that she would continue to think of me after she had left the church, and would perhaps feel sad that evening, at Guermantes, because of me. And at once I fell in love with her, for if it is sometimes enough to make us love a woman that she should look on us with contempt, as I supposed