C’est que les soirs où des étrangers, ou seulement M. Swann, étaient là, maman ne montait pas dans ma chambre. Je ne dînais pas à table, je venais après dîner au jardin, et à neuf heures je disais bonsoir et allais me coucher. Je dînais avant tout le monde et je venais ensuite m’asseoir à table, jusqu’à huit heures où il était convenu que je devais monter; ce baiser précieux et fragile que maman me confiait d’habitude dans mon lit au moment de m’endormir il me fallait le transporter de la salle à manger dans ma chambre et le garder pendant tout le temps que je me déshabillais, sans que se brisât sa douceur, sans que se répandît et s’évaporât sa vertu volatile et, justement ces soirs-là où j’aurais eu besoin de le recevoir avec plus de précaution, il fallait que je le prisse, que je le dérobasse brusquement, publiquement, sans même avoir le temps et la liberté d’esprit nécessaires pour porter à ce que je faisais cette attention des maniaques qui s’efforcent de ne pas penser à autre chose pendant qu’ils ferment une porte, pour pouvoir, quand l’incertitude maladive leur revient, lui opposer victorieusement le souvenir du moment où ils l’ont fermée. →
And that was because on the evenings when there were visitors, or just M. Swann in the house, Mamma did not come up to my room. I did not, at that time, have dinner with the family: I came out to the garden after dinner, and at nine I said good night and went to bed. But on these evenings I used to dine earlier than the others, and to come in afterwards and sit at table until eight o'clock, when it was understood that I must go upstairs; that frail and precious kiss which Mamma used always to leave upon my lips when I was in bed and just going to sleep I had to take with me from the dining-room to my own, and to keep inviolate all the time that it took me to undress, without letting its sweet charm be broken, without letting its volatile essence diffuse itself and evaporate; and just on those very evenings when I must needs take most pains to receive it with due formality, I had to snatch it, to seize it instantly and in public, without even having the time or being properly free to apply to what I was doing the punctiliousness which madmen use who compel themselves to exclude all other thoughts from their minds while they are shutting a door, so that when the sickness of uncertainty sweeps over them again they can triumphantly face and overcome it with the recollection of the precise moment in which the door was shut.