If Swann had not talked to me about Balbec, I would not have known Albertine, the dining-room in the hotel, the Guermantes. But I would have gone somewhere else, met different people, and my memory, like my books, would be full of quite other pictures which I cannot even imagine, and the novelty of which, in its unfamiliarity, is appealing enough to make me regret not having gone in that direction instead, and regret too that Albertine and the beach at Balbec and Rivebelle and the Guermantes had not remained forever unknown to me.
