In Search of Lost Time [volumes 1 to 7]

by Marcel Proust

At that moment I saw Saint-Loup raise his arm vertically above his head as if he had been making a signal to some one whom I could not see, or like the conductor of an orchestra, and indeed — without any greater transition than when, at a simple wave of the baton, in a symphony or a ballet, violent rhythms succeed a graceful andante — after the courteous words that he had just uttered he brought down his hand with a resounding smack upon the journalist’s cheek.