Back to Balbec, and reading the latest Penguin translation. Great fun, and last night the story of the dairy girl. Once known, never forgotten, the tale of an unknown person who brings in all the aspects of beauty, love, and our own loves. I like the short bit about being new to town and not able to be indifferent to the perceived thoughts of others: (this is from Scott Moncrieff version)

At Combray, since we were known to everyone, I took heed of no one. In life at the seaside one knows only one’s own party. I was not yet old enough, I was still too sensitive to have outgrown the desire to find favour in the sight of other people and to possess their hearts. Nor had I acquired the more noble indifference which a man of the world would have felt, with regard to the people who were eating their luncheon in the room, nor to the boys and girls who strolled past the window, with whom I was pained by the thought that I should never be allowed to go on expeditions, though not so much pained as if my grandmother, contemptuous of social formalities and concerned about nothing but my health, had gone to them with the request, humiliating for me to overhear, that they would consent to let me accompany them.