de
Guermantes), to this fresh and unchanging image the idea: "It is Mme. de
Guermantes"; but I succeeded only in making the idea pass between me and
the image, as though they were two discs moving in separate planes, with a
space between. But this Mme. de Guermantes of whom I had so often dreamed,
now that I could see that she had a real existence independent of myself,
acquired a fresh increase of power over my imagination, which, paralysed
for a moment by contact with a reality so different from anything that it
had expected, began to react and to say within me: "Great and glorious
before the days of Charlemagne, the Guermantes had the right of life and
death over their vassals; the Duchesse de Guermantes descends from
Genevieve de Brabant. She does not know, nor would she consent to know,
any of the people who are here to-day."
And then--oh, marvellous independence of the human gaze, tied to the human
face by a cord so loose, so long, so elastic that it can stray, alone, as
far as it may choose--while Mme. de Guermantes sat in the chapel above the
tombs of her dead ancestors, her gaze lingered here and wandered there,
rose to the capitals of the pillars, and even rested upon myself, like a
ray of sunlight straying down the nave, but a ray of sunlight which, at
the moment when I received its caress, appeared conscious of where it
fell.
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