enriched by the absorption; they showed him the palpable realisation of his fancies, and they interested his mind; they took shape and grew solid before his eyes, and at the same time they soothed his troubled heart. Ah! had fate but allowed him to share a single dwelling with Odette, so that in her house he should be in his own; if, when asking his servant what there would be for luncheon, it had been Odette’s bill of fare that he had learned from the reply; if, when Odette wished to go for a walk, in the morning, along the Avenue du Bois-de-Boulogne, his duty as a good husband had obliged him, though he had no desire to go out, to accompany her, carrying her cloak when she was too warm; and in the evening, after dinner, if she wished to stay at home, and not to dress, if he had been forced to stay beside her, to do what she asked; then how completely would all the trivial details of Swann’s life, which seemed to him now so gloomy, simply because they would, at the same time, have formed part of the life of Odette, have taken on⁠—like that lamp, that orangeade, that armchair, which had absorbed so much of his dreams, which materialised so much of his longing⁠—a sort of superabundant sweetness and a mysterious solidity.