My father, however, was annoyed: "No, no; you have the most absurd ideas.
It would be utterly ridiculous."

But the only one of us in whom the prospect of Swann's arrival gave rise
to an unhappy foreboding was myself. 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.

We were all in the garden when the double peal of the gate-bell sounded
shyly. Everyone knew that it must be Swann, and yet they looked at one
another inquiringly and sent my grandmother scouting.

"See that you thank him intelligibly for the wine," my grandfather warned