Remembering the Dead/400

I was recently rereading Proust’s Swann’s Way, and came across the following passage early on…

“They took a turn or two in the park, where there was a little sunshine. Suddenly M. Swann seized my grandfather by the arm and cried, ‘Ah, my dear old friend, how fortunate we are to be walking here together on such a charming day! Don’t you see how pretty they are, all these tress, my hawthorns, and my new pond, on which you never congratulated me? You look as solemn as the grave. Don’t you feel this little breeze? Ah! Whatever you may say, it’s good to be alive all the same, my dear Amédée!’ And then, abruptly, the memory of his dead wife returned to him, and probably thinking it too complicated to inquire into how, at such a time, he could have allowed himself to be carried away by an impulse of happiness, he confined himself to a gesture which he habitually employed whenever any perplexing question came into his mind: that is, he passed his hand across his forehead, rubbed his eyes, and wiped his glasses. And yet he never got over the loss of his wife, but used to say to my grandfather, during the two years by which he survived her, ‘It’s a funny thing, now; I very often think of my poor wife, but I cannot think of her for long at a time.’”