The narrator's adolescent infatuations — with the actress Berma on stage, with the diplomat Norpois, and with a band of girls on the beach at Balbec, above all the elusive Albertine — teach him how desire outruns its objects.
Books mentioned in Within a Budding Grove (2)
Cousin Bette by Honoré de Balzac: “playing upon the title of Balzac's story, "Le Cousin Bête".”
Phèdre by Jean Racine: “I at last went to hear Berma, at a _matinée_, in _Phèdre_”