But, of course, the boy, as he was then, must have heard a good deal more about the Sonata from Swann, who himself was no mean judge of music, as of painting; though, in his appreciation of the latter art, he does seem to have derived more pleasure from the discovery in an “old master” of a likeness to one of his friends than from the aesthetic merits it might possess. But Swann’s opinion of the Sonata cannot perhaps, for other reasons, be trusted altogether; it was too closely linked up in his mind with certain occurrences in his private life. Yet we can accept the favourable impression it made upon him at a time when he had not met Mme. de Crécy. On that occasion he had appreciated at first “only the material quality of the sounds which the instruments secreted. And it had been a source of keen pleasure when, below the narrow ribbon of the violin-part, delicate, unyielding, substantial, and governing the whole, he had suddenly perceived, where it was trying to surge upwards in a flowing tide of sound, the mass of the piano-part, multiform, coherent, level, and breaking everywhere in melody like the deep blue tumult of the sea, silvered and charmed into a minor key by the moonlight. But at a given moment, without being able to distinguish any clear outline, or to give a name to what was pleasing him, suddenly enraptured, he had tried to collect, to treasure in his memory, the phrase or harmony—he knew not which—that had just been played and had opened and expanded his soul, just as the fragrance of certain roses, wafted upon the moist air of evening, has the power to dilate our nostrils.... Hardly had the delicious sensation which Swann had experienced died away, before his memory furnished him with an immediate transcript, summary, it is true, and provisional, but one on which he had kept his eyes fixed while the playing continued, so effectively that, when the same impression suddenly returned, it was no longer uncapturable. He was able to picture to himself its extent, its symmetrical arrangement, its notation, the strength of its expression; he had before him that definite object which was no longer pure music, but rather design, architecture, thought, and which allowed the actual music to be recalled. This time he had distinguished, quite clearly, a phrase which emerged for a few moments from the waves of sound. It had at once held out to him an invitation to partake of intimate pleasures, of whose existence, before hearing it, he had never dreamed, into which he felt that nothing but this phrase could initiate him; and he had been filled with love for it, as with a new and strange desire.”