Then I observed the rare, almost archaic phrases which
he liked to employ at certain points, where a hidden flow of harmony, a
prelude contained and concealed in the work itself would animate and
elevate his style; and it was at such points as these, too, that he would
begin to speak of the "vain dream of life," of the "inexhaustible torrent
of fair forms," of the "sterile, splendid torture of understanding and
loving," of the "moving effigies which ennoble for all time the charming
and venerable fronts of our cathedrals"; that he would express a whole
system of philosophy, new to me, by the use of marvellous imagery, to the
inspiration of which I would naturally have ascribed that sound of harping
which began to chime and echo in my ears, an accompaniment to which that
imagery added something ethereal and sublime. One of these passages of
Bergotte, the third or fourth which I had detached from the rest, filled
me with a joy to which the meagre joy I had tasted in the first passage
bore no comparison, a joy which I felt myself to have experienced in some
innermost chamber of my soul, deep, undivided, vast, from which all
obstructions and partitions seemed to have been swept away.
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