As for Mme. de Guermantes herself, since she remained there
motionless, sitting like a mother who affects not to notice the rude or
awkward conduct of her children who, in the course of their play, are
speaking to people whom she does not know, it was impossible for me to
determine whether she approved or condemned the vagrancy of her eyes in
the careless detachment of her heart.
I felt it to be important that she should not leave the church before I
had been able to look long enough upon her, reminding myself that for
years past I had regarded the sight of her as a thing eminently to be
desired, and I kept my eyes fixed on her, as though by gazing at her I
should be able to carry away and incorporate, to store up, for later
reference, in myself the memory of that prominent nose, those red cheeks,
of all those details which struck me as so much precious, authentic,
unparalleled information with regard to her face. And now that, whenever I
brought my mind to bear upon that face--and especially, perhaps, in my
determination, that form of the instinct of self-preservation with which
we guard everything that is best in ourselves, not to admit that I had
been in any way deceived--I found only beauty there; setting her once
again (since they were one and the same person, this lady who sat before
me and that Duchesse de Guermantes whom, until then, I had been used to
conjure into an imagined shape) apart from and above that common run of
humanity with which the sight, pure and simple, of her in the flesh had
made me for a moment confound her, I grew indignant when I heard people
saying, in the congregation round me: "She is better looking than Mme.
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