But
the thought of his absent mistress was incessantly, indissolubly blended
with all the simplest actions of Swann's daily life--when he took his
meals, opened his letters, went for a walk or to bed--by the fact of his
regret at having to perform those actions without her; like those initials
of Philibert the Fair which, in the church of Brou, because of her grief,
her longing for him, Margaret of Austria intertwined everywhere with her
own. On some days, instead of staying at home, he would go for luncheon to
a restaurant not far off, to which he had been attracted, some time
before, by the excellence of its cookery, but to which he now went only
for one of those reasons, at once mystical and absurd, which people call
'romantic'; because this restaurant (which, by the way, still exists) bore
the same name as the street in which Odette lived: the Laperouse.
Sometimes, when she had been away on a short visit somewhere, several days
would elapse before she thought of letting him know that she had returned
to Paris. And then she would say quite simply, without taking (as she
would once have taken) the precaution of covering herself, at all costs,
with a little fragment borrowed from the truth, that she had just, at that
very moment, arrived by the morning train.
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