The Captive(女囚)
〔French〕Marcel Proust
Part 1 Chapter 1Life With Albertine
At daybreak, my face still turned to the wall, and before I had
seen above the big inner curtains what tone the first streaks of
light assumed, I could already tell what sort of day it was. The
first sounds from the street had told me, according to whether they
came to my ears dulled and distorted by the moisture of the
atmosphere or quivering like arrows in the resonant and empty area
of a spacious, crisply frozen, pure morning; as soon as I heard the
rumble of the first tramcar, I could tell whether it was sodden
with rain or setting forth into the blue. And perhaps these sounds
had themselves been forestalled by some swifter and more pervasive
emanation which, stealing into my slumber, diffused in it a
melancholy that seemed to presage snow, or gave…