Swann's Way

all, be in residence. Still, as Swann had told us that he ought not,
really, to go away just then, as he had some people staying in the
house, the line might equally belong to one of these guests. Not a
footstep was to be heard on any of the paths. Somewhere in one of the
tall trees, making a stage in its height, an invisible bird, desperately
attempting to make the day seem shorter, was exploring with a long,
continuous note the solitude that pressed it on every side, but it
received at once so unanimous an answer, so powerful a repercussion of
silence and of immobility that, one would have said, it had arrested
for all eternity the moment which it had been trying to make pass more
quickly. The sunlight fell so implacably from a fixed sky that one was
naturally inclined to slip away out of the reach of its attentions, and
even the slumbering water, whose repose was perpetually being invaded by
the insects that swarmed above its surface, while it dreamed, no doubt,
of some imaginary maelstrom, intensified the uneasiness which the sight
of that floating cork had wrought in me, by appearing to draw it at
full speed across the silent reaches of a mirrored firmament; now almost