1341 - Du moins j’étais heureux qu’avant de mourir elle m’eût écrit cette lettre

Du moins j’étais heureux qu’avant de mourir elle m’eût écrit cette lettre, et surtout envoyé la dernière dépêche qui me prouvait qu’elle fût revenue si elle eût vécu. Il me semblait que c’était non seulement plus doux, mais plus beau ainsi, que l’événement eût été incomplet sans ce télégramme, eût eu moins figure d’art et de destin. En réalité il l’eût eu tout autant s’il eût été autre ; car tout événement est comme un moule d’une forme particulière, et, quel qu’il soit, il impose, à la série des faits qu’il est venu interrompre et semble en conclure, un dessin que nous croyons le seul possible parce que nous ne connaissons pas celui qui eût pu lui être substitué. Je me répétais :


1341 At any rate I was glad that, before she died

Marcel Proust

"Remembrance of Things Past" (In Search of Lost Time),

translated by C. K. Scott Moncrieff (1889-1930)

At any rate I was glad that, before she died, she had written me that letter, and above all had sent me that final message which proved to me that she would have returned had she lived. It seemed to me that it was not merely more soothing, but more beautiful also, that the event would have been incomplete without this note, would not have had so markedly the form of art and destiny. In reality it would have been just as markedly so had it been different; for every event is like a mould of a particular shape, and, whatever it be, it imposes, upon the series of incidents which it has interrupted and seems to have concluded, a pattern which we believe to be the only one possible, because we do not know the other which might have been substituted for it. I repeated to myself: