My beloved will join me in Motovun in a week, and we will go together to Zagreb after another week or so, but Proust’s masterpiece is already in its Samsonite pouch and ready for the trip (“Proust, Samsonite,” July 5, 2012). Once again, I will be spending the first three months of the year in the Croatian capital, and I do not dare go there without one of my favorite reads. Perish the thought. The last week, I experienced something like panic every time I spotted the book in one of the tall piles on the dining table in my livingroom. “What if I forget it here?” it flashed through my mind time and again. “That’d be a real disaster!” Each time this happened, I tried to calm myself down. “It’s too early to worry about such silly things,” I repeated to myself over and over again, but to no avail. In the end, I caved in and went for the Samsonite pouch. I am perfectly aware of the fact that it is kind of ridiculous to pack Proust more than a fortnight before our departure, but I still feel much more comfortable now that this chore is behind me. Proust is Proust, after all. And it was far from easy to get a French edition of his masterpiece, either (“Proust Forever,” July 3, 2012). Whence my panic, to be sure.