Swann's Way

revealed to me that my own humble existence and the Realms of Truth were
less widely separated than I had supposed, that at certain points they
were actually in contact; and in my new-found confidence and joy I wept
upon his printed page, as in the arms of a long-lost father.

From his books I had formed an impression of Bergotte as a frail and
disappointed old man, who had lost his children, and had never found
any consolation. And so I would read, or rather sing his sentences in
my brain, with rather more _dolce_, rather more _lento_ than he himself
had, perhaps, intended, and his simplest phrase would strike my ears
with something peculiarly gentle and loving in its intonation. More than
anything else in the world I cherished his philosophy, and had pledged
myself to it in lifelong devotion. It made me impatient to reach the
age when I should be eligible to attend the class at school called
'Philosophy.' I did not wish to learn or do anything else there, but
simply to exist and be guided entirely by the mind of Bergotte, and,
if I had been told then that the metaphysicians whom I was actually to
follow there resembled him in nothing, I should have been struck down by