It is one of the mistakes of society people not to realize that if they want us to believe in them they have to believe in themselves, or at least respect the essential elements of our belief. At the time when I believed, even though I knew that the contrary was true, that the Guermantes inhabited such a palace by an hereditary right, to penetrate into the palace of the wizard or the fairy, for the gates which open only when one utters the magic word to open before me, seemed to me as difficult a task as to obtain an interview with the wizard and the fairy themselves.
