And the fact that I had really seen him so seldom, in such diverse settings, in such different circumstances and at such long intervals, in that hall in Balbec, in the café at Rivebelle, in the cavalry barracks and at the military dinners at Doncières, at the theater when he slapped the journalist, in the house of the Princesse de Guermantes, all this meant only that I had a sharper, more vivid picture of his life, and a clearer sense of grief at his death, than often one has for people more dearly loved but so regularly seen that the image we retain of them is no more than a sort of vague
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