Swann's Way

name, and as soon as we have recognised their voice the spell is broken.
We have delivered them: they have overcome death and return to share our
life.

And so it is with our own past. It is a labour in vain to attempt to
recapture it: all the efforts of our intellect must prove futile.
The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of
intellect, in some material object (in the sensation which that material
object will give us) which we do not suspect. And as for that object,
it depends on chance whether we come upon it or not before we ourselves
must die.

Many years had elapsed during which nothing of Combray, save what was
comprised in the theatre and the drama of my going to bed there, had
any existence for me, when one day in winter, as I came home, my
mother, seeing that I was cold, offered me some tea, a thing I did
not ordinarily take. I declined at first, and then, for no particular
reason, changed my mind. She sent out for one of those short, plump
little cakes called 'petites madeleines,' which look as though they
had been moulded in the fluted scallop of a pilgrim's shell. And soon,
mechanically, weary after a dull day with the prospect of a depressing