Swann, the unconscious author of my sufferings, the hall through which I
would journey to the first step of that staircase, so hard to climb, which
constituted, all by itself, the tapering 'elevation' of an irregular
pyramid; and, at the summit, my bedroom, with the little passage through
whose glazed door Mamma would enter; in a word, seen always at the same
evening hour, isolated from all its possible surroundings, detached and
solitary against its shadowy background, the bare minimum of scenery
necessary (like the setting one sees printed at the head of an old play,
for its performance in the provinces) to the drama of my undressing, as
though all Combray had consisted of but two floors joined by a slender
staircase, and as though there had been no time there but seven o'clock at
night. I must own that I could have assured any questioner that Combray
did include other scenes and did exist at other hours than these. But
since the facts which I should then have recalled would have been prompted
only by an exercise of the will, by my intellectual memory, and since the
pictures which that kind of memory shews us of the past preserve nothing
of the past itself, I should never have had any wish to ponder over this
residue of Combray.
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