“ The life we lead in a seaside resort such as Balbec can acquire much charm if the sight of a pretty face, a seller of sea-shells, a florist, a girl in a cake-shop, painted in its vivid colours in our morning memory, becomes the aim of each of the sunlit days we idle away on the sands. ”
 Marcel Proust, In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower (1919). copy citation