But in the end the Guermantes, and Gilberte, too, differed from the other people in society in that they thrust their roots further down into a past time of my life in which I dreamed more and believed more strongly in individuals. What at least I had before me, bored as I was chatting away first with one then with the other Guermantes, were those of my childhood imaginings whom I had found the most beautiful and believed the most inaccessible, and I consoled myself, like a shopkeeper whose bookkeeping has become muddled, by confusing the value of having them there with the price my desire had
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