Swann's Way

advanced, and covered its woollen texture with a nap of rosy velvet, a
bloom of light, giving it that sort of tenderness, of solemn sweetness
in the pomp of a joyful celebration, which characterises certain pages
of _Lohengrin_, certain paintings by Carpaccio, and makes us understand
how Baudelaire was able to apply to the sound of the trumpet the epithet
'delicious.'

How often, after that day, in the course of my walks along the
'Guermantes way,' and with what an intensified melancholy did I reflect
on my lack of qualification for a literary career, and that I must
abandon all hope of ever becoming a famous author. The regret that I
felt for this, while I lingered alone to dream for a little by myself,
made me suffer so acutely that, in order not to feel it, my mind of
its own accord, by a sort of inhibition in the instant of pain, ceased
entirely to think of verse-making, of fiction, of the poetic future on
which my want of talent precluded me from counting. Then, quite apart
from all those literary preoccupations, and without definite attachment
to anything, suddenly a roof, a gleam of sunlight reflected from a
stone, the smell of a road would make me stop still, to enjoy the