The scenes played out by our voluntary memory, of course, can be prolonged, as they require no more effort on our part than leafing through a picture book. Long ago, for example, on the day when I had to go to the house of the Princesse de Guermantes for the first time, from the sun-filled courtyard of our house in Paris, I had idly gazed on images of my choice, of the place de l’Église in Combray, or the beach at Balbec, as if I had been leafing through an album of water-colors painted in the different places I had been to choose illustrations of each of these days, enabling me to say, with
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