Translations:CP 03024/5/en

Madame, you wanted to know what became of Mme Swann as she got older. It’s quite difficult to summarize for you. I can tell you that she became more beautiful: “This was mainly the result of what happened during her mid-life, when after a period of time Odette had discovered, or invented for herself, her own personal look, an unalterable “character”, a “style” of beauty; and on her disjointed features - which for so long, prey to the dangerous and futile vagaries of the flesh, taking on years for the briefest of moments, and at the slightest fatigue, a sort of fleeting old age, had composed in her for better or worse, according to her mood and her state of health, a dishevelled, changeable, formless and charming face - had now bestowed on her this fixed type, a sort of “eternal youth".