Swann's Way

of life.

My walks, that autumn, were all the more delightful because I used
to take them after long hours spent over a book. When I was tired of
reading, after a whole morning in the house, I would throw my plaid
across my shoulders and set out; my body, which in a long spell of
enforced immobility had stored up an accumulation of vital energy, was
now obliged, like a spinning-top wound and let go, to spend this in
every direction. The walls of houses, the Tansonville hedge, the trees
of Roussainville wood, the bushes against which Montjouvain leaned its
back, all must bear the blows of my walking-stick or umbrella, must
hear my shouts of happiness, blows and shouts being indeed no more than
expressions of the confused ideas which exhilarated me, and which, not
being developed to the point at which they might rest exposed to the
light of day, rather than submit to a slow and difficult course
of elucidation, found it easier and more pleasant to drift into an
immediate outlet. And so it is that the bulk of what appear to be the
emotional renderings of our inmost sensations do no more than relieve us
of the burden of those sensations by allowing them to escape from us in