{"product_id":"2940013368149","title":"The Captive","description":"At daybreak, my face still turned to the wall, and before I had seen\u003cbr\u003eabove the big inner curtains what tone the first streaks of light\u003cbr\u003eassumed, I could already tell what sort of day it was. The first\u003cbr\u003esounds from the street had told me, according to whether they came to\u003cbr\u003emy ears dulled and distorted by the moisture of the atmosphere or\u003cbr\u003equivering like arrows in the resonant and empty area of a spacious,\u003cbr\u003ecrisply frozen, pure morning; as soon as I heard the rumble of the\u003cbr\u003efirst tramcar, I could tell whether it was sodden with rain or setting\u003cbr\u003eforth into the blue. And perhaps these sounds had themselves been\u003cbr\u003eforestalled by some swifter and more pervasive emanation which,\u003cbr\u003estealing into my slumber, diffused in it a melancholy that seemed to\u003cbr\u003epresage snow, or gave utterance (through the lips of a little person\u003cbr\u003ewho occasionally reappeared there) to so many hymns to the glory of\u003cbr\u003ethe sun that, having first of all begun to smile in my sleep, having\u003cbr\u003eprepared my eyes, behind their shut lids, to be dazzled, I awoke\u003cbr\u003efinally amid deafening strains of music. It was, moreover, principally\u003cbr\u003efrom my bedroom that I took in the life of the outer world during this\u003cbr\u003eperiod. I know that Bloch reported that, when he called to see me in\u003cbr\u003ethe evenings, he could hear the sound of conversation; as my mother\u003cbr\u003ewas at Combray and he never found anybody in my room, he concluded\u003cbr\u003ethat I was talking to myself. When, much later, he learned that\u003cbr\u003eAlbertine had been staying with me at the time, and realised that I\u003cbr\u003ehad concealed her presence from all my friends, he declared that he\u003cbr\u003esaw at last the reason why, during that episode in my life, I had\u003cbr\u003ealways refused to go out of doors. He was wrong. His mistake was,\u003cbr\u003ehowever, quite pardonable, for the truth, even if it is inevitable, is\u003cbr\u003enot always conceivable as a whole. People who learn some accurate\u003cbr\u003edetail of another person's life at once deduce consequences which are\u003cbr\u003enot accurate, and see in the newly discovered fact an explanation of\u003cbr\u003ethings that have no connexion with it whatsoever.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen I reflect now that my mistress had come, on our return from\u003cbr\u003eBalbec, to live in Paris under the same roof as myself, that she had\u003cbr\u003eabandoned the idea of going on a cruise, that she was installed in a\u003cbr\u003ebedroom within twenty paces of my own, at the end of the corridor, in\u003cbr\u003emy father's tapestried study, and that late every night, before\u003cbr\u003eleaving me, she used to slide her tongue between my lips like a\u003cbr\u003eportion of daily bread, a nourishing food that had the almost sacred\u003cbr\u003echaracter of all flesh upon which the sufferings that we have endured\u003cbr\u003eon its account have come in time to confer a sort of spiritual grace,\u003cbr\u003ewhat I at once call to mind in comparison is not the night that\u003cbr\u003eCaptain de Borodino allowed me to spend in barracks, a favour which\u003cbr\u003ecured what was after all only a passing distemper, but the night on\u003cbr\u003ewhich my father sent Mamma to sleep in the little bed by the side of\u003cbr\u003emy own. So it is that life, if it is once again to deliver us from an\u003cbr\u003eanguish that has seemed inevitable, does so in conditions that are\u003cbr\u003edifferent, so diametrically opposed at times that it is almost an open\u003cbr\u003esacrilege to assert the identity of the grace bestowed upon us.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen Albertine had heard from Françoise that, in the darkness of my\u003cbr\u003estill curtained room, I was not asleep, she had no scruple about\u003cbr\u003emaking a noise as she took her bath, in her own dressing-room. Then,\u003cbr\u003efrequently, instead of waiting until later in the day, I would repair\u003cbr\u003eto a bathroom adjoining hers, which had a certain charm of its own.\u003cbr\u003eTime was, when a stage manager would spend hundreds of thousands of\u003cbr\u003efrancs to begem with real emeralds the throne upon which a great\u003cbr\u003eactress would play the part of an empress. The Russian ballet has\u003cbr\u003etaught us that simple arrangements of light will create, if trained\u003cbr\u003eupon the right spot, jewels as gorgeous and more varied. This\u003cbr\u003edecoration, itself immaterial, is not so graceful, however, as that\u003cbr\u003ewhich, at eight o'clock in the morning, the sun substitutes for what\u003cbr\u003ewe were accustomed to see when we did not arise before noon. The\u003cbr\u003ewindows of our respective bathrooms, so that their occupants might not\u003cbr\u003ebe visible from without, were not of clear glass but clouded with an\u003cbr\u003eartificial and old--fashioned kind of frost. All of a sudden, the sun\u003cbr\u003ewould colour this drapery of glass, gild it, and discovering in myself\u003cbr\u003ean earlier young man whom habit had long concealed, would intoxicate\u003cbr\u003eme with memories, as though I were out in the open country gazing at a\u003cbr\u003ehedge of golden leaves in which even a bird was not lacking.  For I\u003cbr\u003ecould hear Albertine ceaselessly humming:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  For melancholy Is but folly,\u003cbr\u003e  And he who heeds it is a fool.","brand":"Purple Cow Publishing","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47079433601264,"sku":"2940013368149","price":5.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940013368149_p0.jpg?v=1763580436","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940013368149","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}