for ever inscribed, of that name which, at the moment when I heard
it, seemed to me fuller, more portentous than any other name, because
it was burdened with the weight of all the occasions on which I had
secretly uttered it in my mind. It caused me a pleasure which I was
ashamed to have dared to demand from my parents, for so great was it
that to have procured it for me must have involved them in an immensity
of effort, and with no recompense, since for them there was no pleasure
in the sound. And so I would prudently turn the conversation. And by
a scruple of conscience, also. All the singular seductions which I had
stored up in the sound of that word Swann, I found again as soon as it
was uttered. And then it occurred to me suddenly that my parents could
not fail to experience the same emotions, that they must find themselves
sharing my point of view, that they perceived in their turn, that they
condoned, that they even embraced my visionary longings, and I was as
wretched as though I had ravished and corrupted the innocence of their
hearts.

That year my family fixed the day of their return to Paris rather
earlier than usual. On the morning of our departure I had had my
hair curled, to be ready to face the photographer, had had a new hat
carefully set upon my head, and had been buttoned into a velvet jacket;
a little later my mother, after searching everywhere for me, found me
standing in tears on that steep little hillside close to Tansonville,
bidding a long farewell to my hawthorns, clasping their sharp branches
to my bosom, and (like a princess in a tragedy, oppressed by the weight
of all her senseless jewellery) with no gratitude towards the officious
hand which had, in curling those ringlets, been at pains to collect all
my hair upon my forehead; trampling underfoot the curl-papers which I
had torn from my head, and my new hat with them. My mother was not at
all moved by my tears, but she could not suppress a cry at the sight of
my battered headgear and my ruined jacket. I did not, however, hear her.
"Oh, my poor little hawthorns," I was assuring them through my sobs, "it
is not you that want to make me unhappy, to force me to leave you.
You, you have never done me any harm. So I shall always love you." And,
drying my eyes, I promised them that, when I grew up, I would never copy
the foolish example of other men, but that even in Paris, on fine spring
days, instead of paying calls and listening to silly talk, I