. . . I realised the impossibility of obtaining any direct and certain knowledge of whether Françoise loved or hated me. And thus it was she who first gave me the idea that a person does not, as I had imagined, stand motionless and clear before our eyes with his merits, his defects, his plans, his intentions with regard to ourselves (like a garden at which we gaze through a railing with all its borders spread out before us), but is a shadow which we can never penetrate, of which there can be no such thing as direct knowledge, with respect to which we form countless beliefs, based upon words and sometimes actions, neither of which can give us anything but inadequate and as it proves contradictory information--a shadow behind which we can alternately imagine, with equal justification, that there burns the flame of hatred and of love. (pp. 81-82)
Noted: Marcel Proust
From The Guermantes Way by Marcel Proust (translation by Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin, revised by D.J. Enright):