After a number of pages extolling the beauty of hawthorns, especially the magnificent pink one that grows in Swann's park, our little hero gets his first sighting of Gilberte, daughter of Swann and Odette. Gilberte is out with Odette and the baron de Charlus, all three of whom feature significantly in future volumes.
But to Gilberte, since the lady in pink has already been mentioned:
And so was wafted to my ears the name of Gilberte, bestowed on me like a talisman which might, perhaps, enable me some day to rediscover her whom its syllables had just endowed with a definite personality, whereas, a moment earlier, she had been only something vaguely seen. So it came to me, uttered across the heads of the stocks and jasmines, pungent and cool as the drops which fell from the green watering-pipe; impregnating and irradiating the zone of pure air through which it had passed, which it set apart and isolated from all other air, with the mystery of the life of her whom its syllables designated to the happy creatures that lived and walked and travelled in her company; unfolding through the arch of the pink hawthorn, which opened at the height of my shoulder, the quintessence of their familiarity—so exquisitely painful to myself—with her, and with all that unknown world of her existence, into which I should never penetrate.
And then, just a few pages later, one of my favourite bits of all - the moon out in the day:
Sometimes in the afternoon sky a white moon would creep up like a little cloud, furtive, without display, suggesting an actress who does not have to ‘come on’ for a while, and so goes ‘in front’ in her ordinary clothes to watch the rest of the company for a moment, but keeps in the background, not wishing to attract attention to herself.
I love to quote that bit, whenever the moon shows itself in the day.
Ah, bliss.
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