Swann's Way

brushing his cheek with the loosened tresses of her hair, bending one
knee in what was almost a dancer's pose, so that she could lean without
tiring herself over the picture, at which she was gazing, with bended
head, out of those great eyes, which seemed so weary and so sullen when
there was nothing to animate her, Swann was struck by her resemblance to
the figure of Zipporah, Jethro's Daughter, which is to be seen in one
of the Sistine frescoes. He had always found a peculiar fascination
in tracing in the paintings of the Old Masters, not merely the general
characteristics of the people whom he encountered in his daily life, but
rather what seems least susceptible of generalisation, the individual
features of men and women whom he knew, as, for instance, in a bust
of the Doge Loredan by Antonio Rizzo, the prominent cheekbones, the
slanting eyebrows, in short, a speaking likeness to his own coachman
Rémi; in the colouring of a Ghirlandaio, the nose of M. de Palancy; in a
portrait by Tintoretto, the invasion of the plumpness of the cheek by an
outcrop of whisker, the broken nose, the penetrating stare, the swollen
eyelids of Dr. du Boulbon. Perhaps because he had always regretted,