Swann's Way

Sovereigns of Europe, and so would shut his eyes to the mistake he was
making in seeking to establish a similarity by an exact and therefore
lifeless copy of mere outward forms--a middle-aged lady in a small
country town, by doing no more than yield whole-hearted obedience to her
own irresistible eccentricities, and to a spirit of mischief engendered
by the utter idleness of her existence, could see, without ever having
given a thought to Louis XIV, the most trivial occupations of her daily
life, her morning toilet, her luncheon, her afternoon nap, assume, by
virtue of their despotic singularity, something of the interest that was
to be found in what Saint-Simon used to call the 'machinery' of life at
Versailles; and was able, too, to persuade herself that her silence,
a shade of good humour or of arrogance on her features would provide
Françoise with matter for a mental commentary as tense with passion and
terror, as did the silence, the good humour or the arrogance of the King
when a courtier, or even his greatest nobles, had presented a petition
to him, at the turning of an avenue, at Versailles.

One Sunday, when my aunt had received simultaneous visits from the Curé