"It's easy to see that you're a musician heart and soul, Madame," said the
General, alluding to the incident of the candle.
Meanwhile the concert had begun again, and Swann saw that he could not now
go before the end of the new number. He suffered greatly from being shut
up among all these people whose stupidity and absurdities wounded him all
the more cruelly since, being ignorant of his love, incapable, had they
known of it, of taking any interest, or of doing more than smile at it as
at some childish joke, or deplore it as an act of insanity, they made it
appear to him in the aspect of a subjective state which existed for
himself alone, whose reality there was nothing external to confirm; he
suffered overwhelmingly, to the point at which even the sound of the
instruments made him want to cry, from having to prolong his exile in this
place to which Odette would never come, in which no one, nothing was aware
of her existence, from which she was entirely absent.
But suddenly it was as though she had entered, and this apparition tore
him with such anguish that his hand rose impulsively to his heart.
Pages:
646
647
648
649
650
651
652
653
654
655
656
657
658
659
660
661
662
663
664
665
666
667
668
669
670