And so I would often lie until morning, dreaming of the old days at
Combray, of my melancholy and wakeful evenings there; of other days
besides, the memory of which had been more lately restored to me by the
taste--by what would have been called at Combray the 'perfume'---of a cup
of tea; and, by an association of memories, of a story which, many years
after I had left the little place, had been told me of a love affair in
which Swann had been involved before I was born; with that accuracy of
detail which it is easier, often, to obtain when we are studying the lives
of people who have been dead for centuries than when we are trying to
chronicle those of our own most intimate friends, an accuracy which it
seems as impossible to attain as it seemed impossible to speak from one
town to another, before we learned of the contrivance by which that
impossibility has been overcome. All these memories, following one after
another, were condensed into a single substance, but had not so far
coalesced that I could not discern between the three strata, between my
oldest, my instinctive memories, those others, inspired more recently by a
taste or 'perfume,' and those which were actually the memories of another,
from whom I had acquired them at second hand--no fissures, indeed, no
geological faults, but at least those veins, those streaks of colour which
in certain rocks, in certain marbles, point to differences of origin, age,
and formation.
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