Swann's Way

silence that followed seemed to herald the beginning, in the blue sky
above me, of that long part of the day still allowed me for reading,
until the good dinner which Françoise was even now preparing should come
to strengthen and refresh me after the strenuous pursuit of its hero
through the pages of my book. And, as each hour struck, it would seem to
me that a few seconds only had passed since the hour before; the latest
would inscribe itself, close to its predecessor, on the sky's surface,
and I would be unable to believe that sixty minutes could be squeezed
into the tiny arc of blue which was comprised between their two golden
figures. Sometimes it would even happen that this precocious hour would
sound two strokes more than the last; there must then have been an hour
which I had not heard strike; something which had taken place had not
taken place for me; the fascination of my book, a magic as potent as the
deepest slumber, had stopped my enchanted ears and had obliterated
the sound of that golden bell from the azure surface of the enveloping
silence. Sweet Sunday afternoons beneath the chestnut-tree in our
Combray garden, from which I was careful to eliminate every commonplace