To a section of them, even infinitely minute, what celestial herbary would I not have given as a reliquary. But since I never hoped to obtain an actual fragment of those plaits, if at least I had been able to have their photograph, how far more precious than one of a sheet of flowers traced by Vinci’s pencil! To acquire one of these, I stooped⁠—with friends of the Swanns, and even with photographers⁠—to servilities which did not procure for me what I wanted, but tied me for life to a number of extremely tiresome people.