The stiffened side
underneath my body would, for instance, in trying to fix its position,
imagine itself to be lying, face to the wall, in a big bed with a canopy;
and at once I would say to myself, "Why, I must have gone to sleep after
all, and Mamma never came to say good night!" for I was in the country
with my grandfather, who died years ago; and my body, the side upon which
I was lying, loyally preserving from the past an impression which my mind
should never have forgotten, brought back before my eyes the glimmering
flame of the night-light in its bowl of Bohemian glass, shaped like an urn
and hung by chains from the ceiling, and the chimney-piece of Siena marble
in my bedroom at Combray, in my great-aunt's house, in those far distant
days which, at the moment of waking, seemed present without being clearly
denned, but would become plainer in a little while when I was properly
awake.
Then would come up the memory of a fresh position; the wall slid away in
another direction; I was in my room in Mme. de Saint-Loup's house in the
country; good heavens, it must be ten o'clock, they will have finished
dinner! I must have overslept myself, in the little nap which I always
take when I come in from my walk with Mme.
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