My Year With Proust - Day 22

   "But the vote of the family council was unanimous, that my father had imagined the whole thing, or that Legrandin, at the moment in question, had been preoccupied in thinking about something else.  Anyhow, my father's fears were dissipated no later than the following evening.  As we returned from a long walk we saw, near the Pont-Vieux, Legrandin himself, who, on account of the holidays, was spending a few days more in Combrary.  he came up to us with out-stretched hands: 'Do you know, master book-lover,' he asked me, 'this line of Paul Desjardins?'

Now are the woods all black, but still the sky is blue.

Is not that a fine rendering of a moment like this?  Perhaps you have never read Paul Desjardins.  Read him, my boy, read him; in these days he is converted, they tell me, into a preaching friar, but he used to have the most charming water-color touch - 

Now are the woods all black, but still the sky is blue.

May you always see a blue sky overhead, my young friend; and then, even when the time comes, which is coming now for me, when the woods are all black, when night is fast falling, you will be able to console yourself, as I am doing, by looking up to the sky.'

Marcel Proust, Swann's Way, p. 126

Part of me wants to take this advice as watered-down Marcus Aurelius, although I suppose I take most things as watered-down Marcus Aurelius.  Of course, my philosopher friends Kite and Capone would mock Marcus Aurelius as watered-down Epictetus.