' And if, in spite of that, they were for me, in their
capacity as a duke and a duchess, real people, though of an unfamiliar
kind, this ducal personality was in its turn enormously distended,
immaterialised, so as to encircle and contain that Guermantes of which
they were duke and duchess, all that sunlit 'Guermantes way' of our walks,
the course of the Vivonne, its water-lilies and its overshadowing trees,
and an endless series of hot summer afternoons. And I knew that they bore
not only the titles of Duc and Duchesse de Guermantes, but that since the
fourteenth century, when, after vain attempts to conquer its earlier lords
in battle, they had allied themselves by marriage, and so became Counts of
Combray, the first citizens, consequently, of the place, and yet the only
ones among its citizens who did not reside in it--Comtes de Combray,
possessing Combray, threading it on their string of names and titles,
absorbing it in their personalities, and illustrating, no doubt, in
themselves that strange and pious melancholy which was peculiar to
Combray; proprietors of the town, though not of any particular house
there; dwelling, presumably, out of doors, in the street, between heaven
and earth, like that Gilbert de Guermantes, of whom I could see, in the
stained glass of the apse of Saint-Hilaire, only the 'other side' in dull
black lacquer, if I raised my eyes to look for him, when I was going to
Camus's for a packet of salt.
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