"But while, and hour after his awakening, he was giving instructions to the barber, so that his stiffly brushed hair should not become disarranged on the journey, he thought once again of his dream; he saw once again, as he had felt them close behind him, Odette's pallid complexion, her too thin cheeks, her drawn features, her tired eyes, all the things which - in the course of those successive bursts of affection which had made of his enduring love for Odette a long oblivion of the first impression that he had formed of her - he had ceased to observe after the first few days of their intimacy, days to which, doubtless, while he slept, his memory had returned to seek the exact sensation of those things. And with that old, intermittent fatuity, which appeared in him now that he was no longer unhappy, and lowered, at the same time, the average level of his morality, he cried out in his heart: 'To think that I've wasted years of my life, that I've longed to die, that I've experienced my greatest love, for a woman who didn't appeal to me, who wasn't even my type!'"
Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, pp. 400-401
And so we come to the conclusion of the lengthy section "Swann in Love" from Swann's Way, although not the end of Swann being in love (although it might really be the end of Swann actually being in love), even if it's not the end of Swann and Odette. As we all know, there's nothing more fraught to blow up in our faces than making a declaratory statement, especially a concluding declaratory statement, when it comes to love.
Note to self: make use of the word fatuity more.
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