And then it happened that, going the 'Guermantes way,' I passed
occasionally by a row of well-watered little gardens, over whose hedges
rose clusters of dark blossom. I would stop before them, hoping to gain
some precious addition to my experience, for I seemed to have before my
eyes a fragment of that riverside country which I had longed so much to
see and know since coming upon a description of it by one of my favourite
authors. And it was with that story-book land, with its imagined soil
intersected by a hundred bubbling watercourses, that Guermantes, changing
its form in my mind, became identified, after I heard Dr. Percepied speak
of the flowers and the charming rivulets and fountains that were to be
seen there in the ducal park. I used to dream that Mme. de Guermantes,
taking a sudden capricious fancy for myself, invited me there, that all
day long she stood fishing for trout by my side. And when evening came,
holding my hand in her own, as we passed by the little gardens of her
vassals, she would point out to me the flowers that leaned their red and
purple spikes along the tops of the low walls, and would teach me all
their names.
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