Marcel Proust: Within a Budding Grove (Unabridged)
Within a Budding Grove
But who, the reader has been asking…
Incidentally she could naturally…
Finally, if I went to hear Berma…
But suddenly everything was altered.
And I gazed appealingly…
As I entered, the Ambassador rose…
You would have supposed, to hear him…
My interest in Berma's acting…
'Your friend M. de Vaugoubert…'
'One thing, however,' M. de Norpois concluded…
Poor Swann, who is as unsophisticated…
Perhaps, on the other hand…
I am aware that this is a blasphemy…
While he was uttering these words…
After M. de Norpois had gone…
Meanwhile my father…
Our visits ended…
Meanwhile Gilberte never came…
This 'marquise' warned me…
I was often obliged, so that my grandmother…
One day, after the postman had called…
Thus at length I found my way…
And she would make us go into the dining room…
At such moments I should…
The Swanns shared this eccentricity…
Mme. Swann had, however…
To return to the reasons…
For these the Bontemps and Cottards…
It was not only in those tea-parties…
As a rule, however…
If I did not understand the sonata…
I expressed an intense desire…
However it may be…
We were standing a little way off…
A favour still more precious…
Meanwhile we had taken our places…
These unintelligible words…
Doubtless again…
An intimate friend would furnish proofs…
I let myself go in telling him…
In Gilberte's eyes…
And yet I ought perhaps…
'I'll tell you who does need a good doctor…'
My mother had not, indeed…
A whole lot more of my aunt…
One was to appear, alas, from a quarter…
Grief that is caused one by a person…
But this resumption of friendly relations…
I was not unhappy…
This kind of existence…
'Aren't we to see anything of your delicious child?'
Swann would accompany his wife to their annual evening…
She relied upon Mme. Cottard…
'When the Doctor gets a book in his hands, you know!'
In consequence of the violence…
Unfortunately certain persons…
She used often to say…
One felt that she did not dress simply…
What helped me to remain patient…
Meanwhile there was in me another force…
Pending these posthumous fulfilments…
The reason I now gave in my letters…
But it was still more than I could endure…
On her arrival…
Place-Names: The Place
Unhappily those marvellous places…
For the first time…
My grandmother, however…
Presently there gathered behind…
Certain names of towns…
In the little train of the local railway…
My sense of loneliness…
She was wearing a loose cambric gown…
For my judgment was aware…
Imagining that I was…
On the other hand…
And at night they did not dine in the hotel…
And then mere chance put into our hands…
'But you were quite wrong, I assure you,' replied the barrister…
But I was obliged to take my eyes…
In the end we too formed…
Were she to encounter Francoise…
But on that previous morning…
After this I would spend the mornings…
Before getting into the carriage…
Sometimes as the carriage laboured…
It is possible, for I have never in real life met any girls…
And this inner self of the charming…
I watched the trees gradually withdraw…
She found fault with Balzac…
Even in Mme. de La Rochefoucauld's…
He was coming from the beach…
Indeed in Saint-Loup…
If I had spent two or three hours…
At his use of the word…
Each of our friends has his defects…
The same day, he contrived to see me alone…
The uncle for whom we were waiting…
He gave me the impression…
I now recognised in the hard look…
I had supposed that in thus inviting…
'On the contrary,' he retorted…
Meanwhile my grandmother…
There was, then, embedded in my friend Bloch…
Seascape, with Frieze of Girls
Just as if, in the heart of their band…
I knew that I should never possess this young cyclist…
I could say to myself with conviction…
I asked myself whether the girls…
But as often as not they were…
Unfortunately, having on that condition…
The harmony of these astral tables…
Often, since even after dinner…
He had, in fact, before he made the acquaintance…
Last night I had been nothing…
Since those days…
And no doubt at first he had thought…
How many observations…
Most of those that covered the walls…
Although we are justified…
For it is all the circles of heaven…
What unimagined types…
The ambiguous character of the person…
One feels unmistakably…
Night was falling…
What did I know of Albertine?
But apart from this…
He chose therefore…
I was afraid that this tone…
When I arrived at Elstir's…
And yet, whatever the inevitable…
We formed that morning…
Having sacrificed this first moment…
'Oh, so you know the little d'Ambresacs…'
At once kindled by her flame…
Within the next few days…
When the time came for her to go off…
In the old days I should have preferred…
'Then, is there a vast difference between a Callot dress…'
Some days we took our refreshment…
For the sense of boredom…
All this I realised…
But in the days that followed…
When there is added to this…
I was looking at Albertine…
Shewing herself always tenderly…
And yet this prelude…
'She's not written only to your father, either…'
I had supposed that the love which I felt for Albertine…
If this sort of select popularity…
Taking first of all the supposition…
The misunderstanding, due to an initial mistake…
So it was with Albertine…
No matter which it might be of my friends…
Sometimes, however, the driving rain…
