I compared these various happy impressions with one another and found that they had this in common, namely, that I felt them as though they were occurring simultaneously in the present moment and in some distant past, which the sound of the spoon against the plate, or the unevenness of the flagstones, or the peculiar flavor of the madeleine even went so far as to make coincide with the present, leaving me uncertain in which period I was. In truth, the person within me who was at this moment enjoying this impression enjoyed in it the qualities which it possessed that were common to both an earlier day and the present moment; and this person came into play only when, by this process of identifying past with present, he could find himself in the only environment in which he could live, that is to say, entirely outside of time.