In Search of Lost Time - Overture

When many different sensations have disturbed the day, when the mind is preoccupied, we can fall asleep once but not a second time. Sleep comes at first more readily than it returns. Such was the case for Jean Valjean. He could not get to sleep again, and so he began to think.

Scarcely had I regained recollection of the purpose that brought me hither. Thoughts of a different tendency had such absolute possession of my mind, that the relations of time and space were almost obliterated from my understanding. These wanderings, however, were restrained, and I ascended to her chamber.

And so it is with our own past. It is a labour in vain to attempt to recapture it: all the efforts of our intellect must prove futile. The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in some material object (in the sensation which that material object will give us) which we do not suspect. And as for that object, it d