Swann's Way

pure and simple, of her in the flesh had made me for a moment confound
her, I grew indignant when I heard people saying, in the congregation
round me: "She is better looking than Mme. Sazerat" or "than Mlle.
Vinteuil," as though she had been in any way comparable with them. And
my gaze resting upon her fair hair, her blue eyes, the lines of her
neck, and overlooking the features which might have reminded me of
the faces of other women, I cried out within myself, as I admired this
deliberately unfinished sketch: "How lovely she is! What true nobility!
it is indeed a proud Guermantes, the descendant of Geneviève de Brabant,
that I have before me!" And the care which I took to focus all my
attention upon her face succeeded in isolating it so completely that
to-day, when I call that marriage ceremony to mind, I find it impossible
to visualise any single person who was present except her, and the
beadle who answered me in the affirmative when I inquired whether the
lady was, indeed, Mme. de Guermantes. But her, I can see her still quite
clearly, especially at the moment when the procession filed into the
sacristy, lighted by the intermittent, hot sunshine of a windy and rainy