Time Regained (In Search of Lost Time #7)

by Marcel Proust

Then, as I thought of all the events which had to be set in place between the moment when I heard those sounds and this party at the Guermantes’, I was frightened to think that the bell could still be ringing in me without my being able to do anything to alter the shrillness of its tinkling, since, no longer remembering very clearly how it faded away, and wanting to rediscover this, and to listen to it properly, I had to try to block out the sound of the conversations which the masks were holding all around me. In order to try to hear it at closer quarters, I was forced to go back down into myself. It must therefore be that this tinkling was always there, and also, between it and the present moment, the whole of this past, unrolled indefinitely, which I did not know that I was carrying. When it tinkled, I already existed, and for me still to be able to hear the tinkling there must have been no break in continuity, I must not have ceased for a moment, not taken a rest from existing, from thinking, from being conscious of myself, because this moment from long ago still stuck to me, so that I could still find it again, still go back to it, simply by going more deeply back into myself.