And at once I fell in love with her, for if it is sometimes
enough to make us love a woman that she looks on us with contempt, as I
supposed Mlle. Swann to have done, while we imagine that she cannot ever
be ours, it is enough, also, sometimes that she looks on us kindly, as
Mme. de Guermantes did then, while we think of her as almost ours already.
Her eyes waxed blue as a periwinkle flower, wholly beyond my reach, yet
dedicated by her to me; and the sun, bursting out again from behind a
threatening cloud and darting the full force of its rays on to the Square
and into the sacristy, shed a geranium glow over the red carpet laid down
for the wedding, along which Mme. de Guermantes smilingly advanced, and
covered its woollen texture with a nap of rosy velvet, a bloom of light,
giving it that sort of tenderness, of solemn sweetness in the pomp of a
joyful celebration, which characterises certain pages of _Lohengrin_,
certain paintings by Carpaccio, and makes us understand how Baudelaire was
able to apply to the sound of the trumpet the epithet 'delicious.'
How often, after that day, in the course of my walks along the
'Guermantes way,' and with what an intensified melancholy did I reflect
on my lack of qualification for a literary career, and that I must abandon
all hope of ever becoming a famous author.
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