lisation of this desire to be able to retrace my
steps.

I could hear my parents' footsteps as they went with Swann; and, when
the rattle of the gate assured me that he had really gone, I crept to
the window. Mamma was asking my father if he had thought the lobster
good, and whether M. Swann had had some of the coffee-and-pistachio ice.
"I thought it rather so-so," she was saying; "next time we shall have to
try another flavour."

"I can't tell you," said my great-aunt, "what a change I find in Swann.
He is quite antiquated!" She had grown so accustomed to seeing Swann
always in the same stage of adolescence that it was a shock to her to
find him suddenly less young than the age she still attributed to him.
And the others too were beginning to remark in Swann that abnormal,
excessive, scandalous senescence, meet only in a celibate, in one of
that class for whom it seems that the great day which knows no morrow
must be longer than for other men, since for such a one it is void of
promise, and from its dawn the moments steadily accumulate without any
subsequent partition among his offspring.

"I fancy he has a lot of trouble with that wretched wife of his, who
'lives' with a certain Monsieur de Charlus, as all Combray knows. It's
the talk of the town."

My mother observed that, in spite of this, he had looked much less
unhappy of late. "And he doesn't nearly so often do that trick of his,
so like his father, of wiping his eyes and passing his hand across his
forehead. I think myself that in his heart of hearts he doesn't love his
wife any more."

"Why, of course he doesn't," answered my grandfather. "He wrote me a
letter about it, ages ago, to which I took care to pay no attention, but
it left no doubt as to his feelings, let alone his love for his wife.
Hullo! you two; you never thanked him for the Asti!" he went on, turning
to his sisters-in-law.

"What! we never thanked him? I think, between you and me, that I put it
to him quite neatly," replied my aunt Flora.

"Yes, you managed it very well; I admired you for it," said my aunt
Celine.

"But you did it very prettily, too."

"Yes; I liked my expression about 'nice neighbours.'"

"What! Do you call that thanking him?" shouted my grandfather. "I heard
that all right, but devil take me if I guessed it was meant for Swann.
You may be quite sure he never noticed it."

"Come, come; Swann is not a fool. I am positive he appreciated the
compliment. You didn't ex