Swann's Way

the grasp of his imagination, and so failed to feed the flame of his
jealousy. The effort exhausted Swann's brain, until, passing his hand
over his eyes, he cried out: "Heaven help me!" as people, after lashing
themselves into an intellectual frenzy in their endeavours to master the
problem of the reality of the external world, or that of the immortality
of the soul, afford relief to their weary brains by an unreasoning
act of faith. But the thought of his absent mistress was incessantly,
indissolubly blended with all the simplest actions of Swann's daily
life--when he took his meals, opened his letters, went for a walk or
to bed--by the fact of his regret at having to perform those actions
without her; like those initials of Philibert the Fair which, in the
church of Brou, because of her grief, her longing for him, Margaret of
Austria intertwined everywhere with her own. On some days, instead of
staying at home, he would go for luncheon to a restaurant not far off,
to which he had been attracted, some time before, by the excellence of
its cookery, but to which he now went only for one of those reasons,
at once mystical and absurd, which people call 'romantic'; because this