Swann's Way

by Proust, Marcel

  “I will not go so far as to say it is the ugliest, for if there are some parts of Saint-Hilaire that are well worth a visit, there are others that are very old now, in my poor basilica, the only one in all the diocese that has never even been restored! My Lord, the porch is dirty and ancient, but still it is really majestic in character; the same is true of the tapestries of Esther, for which personally I would not give two sous but which the experts rank immediately below those at Sens. I can quite see, too, that apart from certain rather realistic details, they offer other details that show a genuine power of observation. But don’t talk to me about the windows! Is it really sensible to leave us with windows that give no light and even deceive our eyes with patches of color I would never be able to identify, in a church where no two paving stones are on the same level and they refuse to replace them for me, giving the excuse that these are the tombstones of the Abbés de Combray and the Seigneurs de Guermantes, the old Comtes de Brabant? The direct ancestors of the present Duc de Guermantes and of the Duchesse too since she’s a Demoiselle de Guermantes who married her cousin.” (My grandmother, who, because she took no great interest in “persons,” ended by confusing all names, would claim, each time anyone mentioned the Duchesse de Guermantes, that she must be a relative of Mme. de Villeparisis. Everyone would burst out laughing; she would try to defend herself by citing as proof a certain letter containing an announcement: “It seems to me I recall there was something about Guermantes in it.” And for once I would side with the others against her, unable to admit that there was any connection between her friend from boarding school and the descendant of Geneviève de Brabant.) “Look at Roussainville, today it is no more than a parish of farmers, though in ancient times the locality experienced a great boom in the commerce of felt hats and clocks. (I’m not sure of the etymology of Roussainville. I’m inclined to think the original name was Rouville [Radulfi villa], analogous to Châteauroux [Castrum radulfi], but we can talk about that some other time.) Well! The church has superb windows, almost all modern, including that impressive Entry of Louis-Philippe into Combray, which would be more suited to Combray itself and is just as good, they say, as the famous windows at Chartres. Only yesterday I saw Dr. Percepied’s brother, who goes in for these things and who regards it as a very fine piece of work. But, as I in fact said to this artist, who seems very courteous, by the way, and who is apparently a veritable virtuoso with the paintbrush, I said, now what do you find so extraordinary about this window, which is if anything a little darker than the others?”

  “I’m sure that if you asked the bishop,” my aunt said feebly, beginning to think she was going to be tired, “he would not refuse you a new window.”

  “You may depend upon it, Madame Octave,” answered the curé. “But it was His Lordship himself who started all the fuss about this wretched window by proving that it represented Gilbert the Bad, Sire de Guermantes, a direct descendant of Geneviève de Brabant, who was a Demoiselle de Guermantes, receiving absolution from Saint Hilaire.”

  “But I can’t see where Saint Hilaire would be.”

  “Why, in the corner of the window—you never noticed a lady in a yellow dress? Well, now, that’s Saint Hilaire, who in certain provinces is also called, you know, Saint Illiers, Saint Hélier, and even, in the Jura, Saint Ylie. And these various corruptions of sanctus Hilarius are not the most curious that have occurred in the names of the blessed. For instance, your own patron, my good Eulalie, sancta Eulalia—do you know what she is in Burgundy? Saint Éloi, quite simply: she has become a male saint. You see Eulalie?—after you die they will turn you into a man.”

  “Monsieur le Curé always has a joke for us.”

  “Gilbert’s brother, Charles the Stammerer, was a pious prince, but having early in life lost his father, Pépin the Mad, who died as a result of his mental infirmity, he wielded the supreme power with all the arrogance of a man who has had no discipline in his youth, and if in a certain town he saw a man whose face he didn’t like, he would massacre every last inhabitant. Gilbert, wishing to take revenge on Charles, caused the church of Combray to be burned down, the original church at the time, which Théodebert, when he and his court left the country house he had near here, at Thiberzy (which would be Theodeberciacus), to go fight the Burgundians, had promised to build over the tomb of Saint Hilaire if the Blessed One would grant him the victory. Nothing remains of it now but the crypt which Théodore must have taken you down into, for Gilbert burned the rest. Finally, he defeated the unfortunate Charles with the help of William the Conqueror” (the curé pronounced it Will’am), “which is why so many English visitors come to see it. But he apparently was unable to win the affection of the people of Combray, for they rushed upon him as he was coming out of Mass and cut off his head. Théodore has a little book he lends out to people that explains it all.

  “But what is unquestionably the most extraordinary thing about our church is the view from the belfry, which is magnificent. Certainly in your case, since you’re not strong, I would never advise you to climb our ninety-seven steps, exactly half the number of the celebrated dome in Milan. It’s quite tiring enough for someone in good health, especially as you must go up bent double if you don’t want to crack your head, and you collect all the cobwebs off the stairwell on your clothes. In any case you would have to wrap yourself up quite snugly,” he added (without noticing my aunt’s indignation at the idea that she was capable of climbing into the belfry), “because there’s quite a breeze once you get to the top! Some people declare they have felt the chill of death up there. Nonetheless, on Sundays there are always groups coming even from a long way off to admire the beauty of the panorama, and they go away enchanted. Now next Sunday, if the weather holds, you’ll be sure to find some people there, since it’s Rogation Day. It really must be admitted, though, that from that spot the scene is magical, with what you might call vistas over the plain that have quite a special charm of their own. On a clear day, you can see all the way to Verneuil. But the marvelous thing is that you can see, all in one glance, things you can’t usually see except one at a time separately, like the course of the Vivonne and the ditches at Saint-Assise-lès-Combray, which are separated by a screen of tall trees, or the different canals at Jouy-le-Vicomte (Gaudiacus vice comitis, as you know). Each time I’ve gone to Jouy-le-Vicomte, of course, I’ve seen a bit of the canal, and then I’ve turned a corner and seen another bit, but by then I could no longer see the preceding bit. I could put them together in my mind, but that didn’t have much of an effect for me. But from the Saint-Hilaire belfry it’s different, the whole area seems to have been caught in one great net. But you can’t see any water; it’s as though there were deep clefts dividing the town into different neighborhoods so neatly it looks like a brioche still holding together after it has been sliced. To do it right, you’d have to be in both places at the same time, in the steeple of Saint-Hilaire and at Jouy-le-Vicomte.”

  The curé had so exhausted my aunt that he was scarcely gone before she had to send Eulalie away too.

  “Here, my poor Eulalie,” she said weakly, drawing a coin from a little purse that she had within reach of her hand, “this is so that you won’t forget me in your prayers.”

  “Oh, Madame Octave! I don’t know if I should; you know I don’t come here for that!” Eulalie would say with the same hesitation and the same awkwardness, each time, as if it were the first, and with an appearance of dissatisfaction that diverted my aunt but did not displease her, because if one day Eulalie looked a little less vexed than usual as she took the coin, my aunt would say:

  “I don’t know what was bothering Eulalie; I gave her the same as usual, and yet she didn’t look happy.”

  “I think she has nothing to complain about, all the same,” Françoise would sigh, inclined to consider as small change anything my aunt gave her for herself or her children and as treasure madly squandered on an ingrate the little coins placed in Eulalie’s hand each Sunday, but so discreetly that Françoise never manag
ed to see them. It was not that Françoise would have wanted for herself the money my aunt gave Eulalie. She took sufficient pleasure in what my aunt possessed, knowing that the mistress’s wealth both elevated and embellished her servant in everyone’s eyes; and that she, Françoise, was distinguished and renowned in Combray, Jouy-le-Vicomte, and other places, on account of my aunt’s many farms, the curé’s frequent and extended visits, the singular number of bottles of Vichy water consumed. She was greedy only for my aunt; if it had been up to her to manage my aunt’s fortune, which would have been her dream, she would have preserved it from the encroachments of others with a maternal ferocity. She would not, however, have seen any great harm in what my aunt, whom she knew to be incurably generous, allowed herself to give away, as long as it went to rich people. Perhaps she thought that they, having no need of gifts from my aunt, could not be suspected of showing fondness for her because of them. Besides, gifts made to people of eminence and wealth, like Mme. Sazerat, M. Swann, M. Legrandin, Mme. Goupil, to persons “of the same rank” as my aunt who “were well suited,” appeared to her to belong to the customs of the strange and brilliant life of the wealthy who hunt, give balls, visit back and forth, people whom she admired and smiled upon. But it was not the same if the beneficiaries of my aunt’s generosity were what Françoise called “people like me, people who are no better than me,” the ones of whom she was most scornful unless they called her “Madame Françoise” and considered themselves to be “less than her.” And when she saw that despite her advice my aunt did just as she pleased and threw her money away—as Françoise saw it, at least—on the unworthy, she began to think the gifts my aunt made to her were quite small compared to the imaginary sums lavished on Eulalie. There was not a single farm in the vicinity of Combray so substantial that Françoise did not suppose Eulalie could easily have bought it with all she earned from her visits. It is true that Eulalie formed the same estimate of the immense and hidden riches of Françoise. It was Françoise’s habit, when Eulalie had gone, to make unkind predictions about her. She detested her, but she was also afraid of her and believed that when Eulalie was there she had to present a “good face.” She made up for it after Eulalie’s departure, without ever naming her, in fact, but proffering sibylline oracles or pronouncements of a general character like those in Ecclesiastes, whose application could not escape my aunt. After watching through a corner of the curtain to see if Eulalie had closed the gate behind her, she would say: “Flatterers know how to make themselves welcome and collect a little pocket money; but have patience, the Good Lord will punish them all one fine day,” with the sidelong glance and the insinuation of Joas thinking only of Athalie when he says:

  The happiness of the wicked rushes down like a mountain stream.28

  But when the curé had come as well and his interminable visit had exhausted my aunt’s strength, Françoise would leave the bedroom behind Eulalie and say:

  “Madame Octave, I will let you rest, you look very tired.”

  And my aunt would not even answer, breathing a sigh that must, it seemed, be the last, her eyes closed, as though dead. But scarcely had Françoise gone down than four peals dealt with the greatest violence would echo through the house, and my aunt, upright on her bed, would cry out:

  “Has Eulalie gone yet? Can you believe it—I forgot to ask her if Mme. Goupil arrived at Mass before the Elevation! Quick, run after her!”

  But Françoise would return without having been able to catch up with Eulalie.

  “It’s vexing,” my aunt would say, shaking her head. “The only important thing I had to ask her!”

  In this way life went on for my aunt Léonie, always the same, in the sweet uniformity of what she called, with affected disdain and deep tenderness, her “little routine.” Preserved by everyone, not only in the house, where we had all experienced the futility of advising her to adopt a better health regimen and so had gradually resigned ourselves to respecting the routine, but even in the village where, three streets away from us, the goods packer, before nailing his crates, would send word to ask Françoise if my aunt was “resting”—this routine was, however, disturbed once during that year. Like a hidden fruit that had ripened without anyone’s noticing and had dropped spontaneously, one night the kitchen maid gave birth. But her pains were intolerable, and since there was no midwife in Combray, Françoise had to go off before daybreak to find one in Thiberzy. My aunt could not rest because of the kitchen maid’s cries, and since Françoise, despite the short distance, did not come back until very late, my aunt missed her very much. And so my mother said to me in the course of the morning: “Go up, why don’t you, and see if your aunt needs anything.” I went into the first room, and through the open door saw my aunt lying on her side sleeping; I heard her snoring lightly. I was going to go away quietly, but the noise I had made had probably interfered with her sleep and made it “shift gears,” as they say about cars, because the music of her snoring broke off for a second and resumed on a lower note, then she woke up and half turned her face, which I could now see; it expressed a sort of terror; she had obviously just had a horrible dream; she could not see me the way she was positioned, and I stayed there not knowing if I should go in to her or leave; but already she seemed to have returned to a sense of reality and had recognized the falsity of the visions that had frightened her; a smile of joy, of pious gratitude to God who permits waking life to be less cruel than dreams, weakly illuminated her face, and in the habit she had formed of talking to herself half aloud when she thought she was alone, she murmured: “God be praised! Our only worry is the kitchen maid, who is having a baby. And here I’ve gone and dreamed that my poor Octave had come back to life and was trying to make me go for a walk every day!” Her hand went out toward her rosary, which lay on the little table, but sleep was overcoming her again and did not leave her the strength to reach it: she fell asleep, soothed, and I crept out of the room without her or anyone else ever finding out what I had heard.

  When I say that except for very rare events, like that confinement, my aunt’s routine never suffered any variation, I am not speaking of those variations which, always the same and repeated at regular intervals, introduced into the heart of that uniformity only a sort of secondary uniformity. And so, for instance, every Saturday, because Françoise went to the Roussainville-le-Pin market in the afternoon, lunch was, for everyone, an hour earlier. And my aunt had so thoroughly acquired the habit of this weekly violation of her habits that she clung to it as much as to the others. She was so well “routined” to it, as Françoise said, that if she had had to wait, some Saturday, to have lunch at the regular hour, this would have “disturbed” her as much as if on another day she had had to move her lunch forward to the Saturday hour. What was more, this early lunch gave Saturday, for all of us, a special face, indulgent and almost kindly. At the time of day when one usually has another hour to live through before the relaxation of the meal, we knew that in a few seconds we would see the arrival of some precocious endives, a gratuitous omelette, an undeserved beefsteak. The return of this asymmetrical Saturday was one of those little events, internal, local, almost civic, which, in peaceful lives and closed societies, create a sort of national bond and become the favorite theme of conversations, jokes, stories wantonly exaggerated: it would have been the ready-made nucleus for a cycle of legends, if one of us had had an epic turn of mind. First thing in the morning, before we were dressed, for no particular reason, for the pleasure of feeling the strength of our comradeship, we would say to one another with good humor, warmth, patriotism: “There’s no time to lose; don’t forget—it’s Saturday!” while my aunt, conferring with Françoise and remembering that the day would be longer than usual, would say: “You might make them a nice bit of veal, since it’s Saturday.” If at ten-thirty one of us absentmindedly drew out his watch and said: “Let’s see, still an hour and a half before lunch,” everyone was delighted to have to say to him: “Come now, what are you thinking of, you’re forgetting it’s Satu
rday!”; we would still be laughing over it a quarter of an hour after and we would promise ourselves to go up and report this lapse to my aunt to amuse her. Even the face of the sky seemed changed. After lunch, the sun, aware that it was Saturday, would linger an hour longer at the top of the sky, and when someone, thinking we were late for our walk, said, “What, only two o’clock?,” watching, as they passed, the two strokes from the Saint-Hilaire steeple (which do not usually encounter anyone yet on paths which are deserted because of the midday meal or the afternoon nap, alongside the lively white stream which even the fisherman has abandoned, and go on alone into the empty sky where only a few lazy clouds remain), we would all answer him in chorus: “But you’re wrong, we had lunch an hour early; you know very well it’s Saturday!” The surprise of a barbarian (this was what we called anyone who did not know what was special about Saturday) who, arriving at eleven o’clock to talk to my father, found us at the table, was one of the things in her life which most amused Françoise. But if she found it funny that the dumbfounded visitor did not know we had lunch earlier on Saturday, she found it even more comical (while at the same time sympathizing from the bottom of her heart with this narrow chauvinism) that my father himself had not realized that the barbarian might not know this and had responded with no further explanation to his astonishment at seeing us already in the dining room: “Well what do you expect, it’s Saturday!” Having reached this point in her story, she would wipe away a few tears of hilarity and, to increase her own pleasure, would prolong the dialogue, invent what had been said in answer by the visitor, to whom this “Saturday” did not explain anything. And quite far from complaining about her embellishments, we would feel they were not enough for us and we would say: “But I think he also said something else. It was longer the first time you told it.” Even my great-aunt would put down her needlework, lift her head, and look over her glasses.