And suddenly, the memory came back to me. That taste was that of the small piece of madeleine that Aunt Léonie offered me on Sunday mornings in Combray after dipping it in her cup of tea or linden infusion, on the mornings when I hadn't even been out before Mass and went to say good morning to her in her room. At the sight of the little madeleine, nothing was recalled until I tasted it... But when nothing remains from a distant past, after the death of people and the destruction of things, only scents and flavors, more fragile but more alive, less tangible but more persistent and faithful, remain long-lasting. They relive like souls and expect, on the ruins of everything, to carry without succumbing, on their almost invisible droplet, the immense edifice of memory.