de Guermantes who on that day, the very
day on which she was expected to come there, could be sitting in that
chapel: it was she! My disappointment was immense. It arose from my not
having borne in mind, when I thought of Mme. de Guermantes, that I was
picturing her to myself in the colours of a tapestry or a painted window,
as living in another century, as being of another substance than the rest
of the human race. Never had I taken into account that she might have a
red face, a mauve scarf like Mme. Sazerat; and the oval curve of her
cheeks reminded me so strongly of people whom I had seen at home that the
suspicion brushed against my mind (though it was immediately banished)
that this lady in her creative principle, in the molecules of her physical
composition, was perhaps not substantially the Duchesse de Guermantes, but
that her body, in ignorance of the name that people had given it, belonged
to a certain type of femininity which included, also, the wives of doctors
and tradesmen. "It is, it must be Mme. de Guermantes, and no one else!"
were the words underlying the attentive and astonished expression with
which I was gazing upon this image, which, naturally enough, bore no
resemblance to those that had so often, under the same title of 'Mme.
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