Swann's Way

preparation, gave me, like a book in which one is astonished to read the
name of a person whom one knows, the pleasure of finding that these were
indeed real lime-blossoms, like those I had seen, when coming from the
train, in the Avenue de la Gare, altered, but only because they were not
imitations but the very same blossoms, which had grown old. And as each
new character is merely a metamorphosis from something older, in these
little grey balls I recognised green buds plucked before their time; but
beyond all else the rosy, moony, tender glow which lit up the blossoms
among the frail forest of stems from which they hung like little golden
roses--marking, as the radiance upon an old wall still marks the place
of a vanished fresco, the difference between those parts of the tree
which had and those which had not been 'in bloom'--shewed me that these
were petals which, before their flowering-time, the chemist's package
had embalmed on warm evenings of spring. That rosy candlelight was still
their colour, but half-extinguished and deadened in the diminished life
which was now theirs, and which may be called the twilight of a flower.
Presently my aunt was able to dip in the boiling infusion, in which she