"
Every evening I would beguile myself into imagining this letter, believing
that I was actually reading it, reciting each of its sentences in turn.
Suddenly I would stop, in alarm. I had realised that, if I was to receive
a letter from Gilberte, it could not, in any case, be this letter, since
it was I myself who had just composed it. And from that moment I would
strive to keep my thoughts clear of the words which I should have liked
her to write to me, from fear lest, by first selecting them myself, I
should be excluding just those identical words,--the dearest, the most
desired--from the field of possible events. Even if, by an almost
impossible coincidence, it had been precisely the letter of my invention
that Gilberte had addressed to me of her own accord, recognising my own
work in it I should not have had the impression that I was receiving
something that had not originated in myself, something real, something
new, a happiness external to my mind, independent of my will, a gift
indeed from love.
While I waited I read over again a page which, although it had not been
written to me by Gilberte, came to me, none the less, from her, that page
by Bergotte upon the beauty of the old myths from which Racine drew his
inspiration, which (with the agate marble) I always kept within reach.
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