Still, as Swann had told us that he ought not, really, to go
away just then, as he had some people staying in the house, the line might
equally belong to one of these guests. Not a footstep was to be heard on
any of the paths. Somewhere in one of the tall trees, making a stage in
its height, an invisible bird, desperately attempting to make the day seem
shorter, was exploring with a long, continuous note the solitude that
pressed it on every side, but it received at once so unanimous an answer,
so powerful a repercussion of silence and of immobility that, one would
have said, it had arrested for all eternity the moment which it had been
trying to make pass more quickly. The sunlight fell so implacably from a
fixed sky that one was naturally inclined to slip away out of the reach of
its attentions, and even the slumbering water, whose repose was
perpetually being invaded by the insects that swarmed above its surface,
while it dreamed, no doubt, of some imaginary maelstrom, intensified the
uneasiness which the sight of that floating cork had wrought in me, by
appearing to draw it at full speed across the silent reaches of a mirrored
firmament; now almost vertical, it seemed on the point of plunging down
out of sight, and I had begun to ask myself whether, setting aside the
longing and the terror that I had of making her acquaintance, it was not
actually my duty to warn Mlle.
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