André Aciman says: “If over the years they (Marcel Proust and his live-in housekeeper Céleste Albaret) developed a certain affection, neither would ever have dared call it love. But love it must have been. Not the love of a servant or of a master, not the love of equals, but of people who are thrown together in one apartment and who, to their complete surprise, discover that they have achieved a degree of intimacy without ever finding the other unbearable.”