Never, in the course of our walks along the 'Guermantes way,' might we
penetrate as far as the source of the Vivonne, of which I had often
thought, which had in my mind so abstract, so ideal an existence, that I
had been as much surprised when some one told me that it was actually to
be found in the same department, and at a given number of miles from
Combray, as I had been on the day when I had learned that there was
another fixed point somewhere on the earth's surface, where, according to
the ancients, opened the jaws of Hell. Nor could we ever reach that other
goal, to which I longed so much to attain, Guermantes itself. I knew that
it was the residence of its proprietors, the Duc and Duchesse de
Guermantes, I knew that they were real personages who did actually exist,
but whenever I thought about them I pictured them to myself either in
tapestry, as was the 'Coronation of Esther' which hung in our church, or
else in changing, rainbow colours, as was Gilbert the Bad in his window,
where he passed from cabbage green, when I was dipping my fingers in the
holy water stoup, to plum blue when I had reached our row of chairs, or
again altogether impalpable, like the image of Genevieve de Brabant,
ancestress of the Guermantes family, which the magic lantern sent
wandering over the curtains of my room or flung aloft upon the ceiling--in
short, always wrapped in the mystery of the Merovingian age, and bathed,
as in a sunset, in the orange light which glowed from the resounding
syllable 'antes.
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