And so it
was from the 'Guermantes way' that I learned to distinguish between these
states which reigned alternately in my mind, during certain periods, going
so far as to divide every day between them, each one returning to
dispossess the other with the regularity of a fever and ague: contiguous,
and yet so foreign to one another, so devoid of means of communication,
that I could no longer understand, or even picture to myself, in one state
what I had desired or dreaded or even done in the other.
So the 'Meseglise way' and the 'Guermantes way' remain for me linked with
many of the little incidents of that one of all the divers lives along
whose parallel lines we are moved, which is the most abundant in sudden
reverses of fortune, the richest in episodes; I mean the life of the mind.
Doubtless it makes in us an imperceptible progress, and the truths which
have changed for us its meaning and its aspect, which have opened new
paths before our feet, we had for long been preparing for their discovery;
but that preparation was unconscious; and for us those truths date only
from the day, from the minute when they became apparent.
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