I
was touched by my friend's kindness in having procured the book for me;
and as everyone is obliged to find some reason for his passion, so much so
that he is glad to find in the creature whom he loves qualities which (he
has learned by reading or in conversation) are worthy to excite a man's
love, that he assimilates them by imitation and makes out of them fresh
reasons for his love, even although these qualities be diametrically
opposed to those for which his love would have sought, so long as it was
spontaneous--as Swann, before my day, had sought to establish the
aesthetic basis of Odette's beauty--I, who had at first loved Gilberte, in
Combray days, on account of all the unknown element in her life into which
I would fain have plunged headlong, have undergone reincarnation,
discarding my own separate existence as a thing that no longer mattered, I
thought now, as of an inestimable advantage, that of this, my own, my too
familiar, my contemptible existence Gilberte might one day become the
humble servant, the kindly, the comforting collaborator, who in the
evenings, helping me in my work, would collate for me the texts of rare
pamphlets.
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