Remembrance of Things Past, Volume I by Marcel Proust

Author:Marcel Proust [Proust, Marcel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-80855-4
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2011-11-01T16:00:00+00:00

It was not only in those tea-parties, on account of which I had formerly had the sorrow of seeing Gilberte leave me and go home earlier than usual, that I was henceforth to take part, but the excursions she made with her mother which, by preventing her from coming to the Champs-Elysées, had deprived me of her on those days when I loitered alone upon the lawn in front of the roundabout—in these also M. and Mme Swann now included me: I had a seat in their landau, and indeed it was me that they asked if I would rather go to the theatre, to a dancing lesson at the house of one of Gilberte’s friends, to some social gathering given by a friend of Mme Swann’s (what the latter called “a little meting”) or to visit the tombs at Saint-Denis.

On the days when I was to go out with the Swanns I would arrive at their house in time for what Mme Swann called “le lunch.” As one was not expected before half-past twelve, while my parents in those days had their meal at a quarter past eleven, it was not until they had risen from table that I made my way towards that sumptuous quarter, deserted enough at any time, but more particularly at that hour, when everyone had gone home. Even on frosty days in winter if the weather was fine, tightening every few minutes the knot of a gorgeous Charvet tie and looking to see that my patent-leather boots were not getting dirty, I would wander up and down the avenues, waiting until twenty-seven minutes past the hour. I could see from afar in the Swanns’ little garden-plot the sunlight glittering like hoar-frost from the bare-boughed trees. It is true that the garden boasted only two. The unusual hour presented the scene in a new light. These pleasures of nature (intensified by the suppression of habit and indeed by my physical hunger), were infused by the thrilling prospect of sitting down to lunch with Mme Swann. It did not diminish them, but dominated and subdued them, made of them social accessories; so that if, at this hour when ordinarily I did not notice them, I seemed now to be discovering the fine weather, the cold, the wintry sunlight, it was all as a sort of preface to the creamed eggs, as a patina, a cool pink glaze applied to the decoration of that mystic chapel which was the habitation of Mme Swann, and in the heart of which there was by contrast so much warmth, so many scents and flowers.

At half-past twelve I would finally make up my mind to enter the house which, like an immense Christmas stocking, seemed ready to bestow upon me supernatural delights. (The French name “Noël” was, by the way, unknown to Mme Swann and Gilberte, who had substituted for it the English “Christmas,” and would speak of nothing but “Christmas pudding,” what people had given them as “Christmas presents,” of going away—the thought of which maddened me with grief—“for Christmas.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.