Status Updates From Dalla parte di Guermantes

If, in the salon of Mme de Villeparisis, as in the Combray church on the day of Mlle Percepied's wedding, had difficulty rediscovering in the lovely, all-too-human face of Mme de Guermantes the enigma of her name, I thought at least that, when she spoke, her conversation would be profound and mysterious, strange as a medieval tapestry or a Gothic window.

With these two disparate elements in mind (because I had known "Rachel, when of the Lord" in a brothel), I realized that many women to whom men devote everything, for whom they suffer and take their own lives, may be in themselves, or for others, what Rachel was for me. The idea that anyone could be painfully consumed with curiosity in regard to her life dumbfounded me.

I had been thinking earlier that if I had not enjoyed my first experiencing of La Berma it was because, as with my earlier experiences with Gilberte in the Champs-Elysees, I had approached it with too strong a desire.