No doubt, by virtue of having permanently and indissolubly combined in me
groups of different impressions, for no reason save that they had made me
feel several separate things at the same time, the Meseglise and
Guermantes 'ways' left me exposed, in later life, to much disillusionment,
and even to many mistakes. For often I have wished to see a person again
without realising that it was simply because that person recalled to me a
hedge of hawthorns in blossom; and I have been led to believe, and to make
some one else believe in an aftermath of affection, by what was no more
than an inclination to travel. But by the same qualities, and by their
persistence in those of my impressions, to-day, to which they can find an
attachment, the two 'ways' give to those impressions a foundation, depth,
a dimension lacking from the rest. They invest them, too, with a charm, a
significance which is for me alone. When, on a summer evening, the
resounding sky growls like a tawny lion, and everyone is complaining of
the storm, it is along the 'Meseglise way' that my fancy strays alone in
ecstasy, inhaling, through the noise of falling rain, the odour of
invisible and persistent lilac-trees.
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