One raises one's eyes; one sees only
the wooden case, magical as a Chinese box; but, at moments, one is still
tricked by the deceiving appeal of the Siren; at times, too, one believes
that one is listening to a captive spirit, struggling in the darkness of
its masterful box, a box quivering with enchantment, like a devil immersed
in a stoup of holy water; sometimes, again, it is in the air, at large,
like a pure and supernatural creature that reveals to the ear, as it
passes, its invisible message.
As though the musicians were not nearly so much playing the little phrase
as performing the rites on which it insisted before it would consent to
appear, as proceeding to utter the incantations necessary to procure, and
to prolong for a few moments, the miracle of its apparition, Swann, who
was no more able now to see it than if it had belonged to a world of
ultra-violet light, who experienced something like the refreshing sense of
a metamorphosis in the momentary blindness with which he had been struck
as he approached it, Swann felt that it was present, like a protective
goddess, a confidant of his love, who, so as to be able to come to him
through the crowd, and to draw him aside to speak to him, had disguised
herself in this sweeping cloak of sound.
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