In Search of Lost Time (20 page)

‘Maybe, maybe' (meaning maybe not), said Françoise so as not to rule out absolutely the possibility of a more favourable alternative.

‘Oh dear, said my aunt, striking her forehead, that reminds me I never found out if she arrived at church after the elevation. I will have to remember to ask Eulalie… Françoise, just look at that black cloud behind the steeple, and that pitiful sunlight on the slates. It's sure to rain before the day is done. It couldn't possibly stay like this, it was too hot. And the sooner the better, because until the storm breaks, my Vichy water won't go down,' added my aunt, in whose mind her desire to hasten the descent of her Vichy water was infinitely more important than her fear of seeing Mme Goupil ruin her dress.

– Maybe, maybe.

– And the fact is, when it rains on the square there isn't much shelter. What, three o'clock? my aunt cried out suddenly, turning pale, why, my goodness, Vespers has begun and I've forgotten my pepsin! Now I know why my Vichy water was lying on my stomach.

And swooping down on a missal bound in violet velvet, with gilt clasps, from which, in her haste, she let escape a few of those pictures edged with a band of yellowing paper lace that mark the pages of the feast days, my aunt, while swallowing her drops, began reading the sacred texts as fast as she could, her comprehension of them slightly obscured by her uncertainty as to whether the pepsin, taken so long after the Vichy water, would still be able to catch up with it and make it go down. ‘Three o'clock! It's unbelievable how the time passes!'

A little tap against the window-pane, as though something had struck it, followed by a copious light spill, as of grains of sand dropping from a window above, then the spill extending, growing regular, finding a rhythm, turning fluid, resonant, musical, immeasurable, universal: it was the rain.

– Well, now, Françoise! What did I tell you? How it's coming down! But I think I heard the bell at the garden gate: go and see who could be outside in such weather.

Françoise returned:

– It was Mme Amédée (my grandmother) – she said she was going for a little walk. And yet it's raining hard.

– That doesn't surprise me at all, said my aunt, lifting her eyes to the skies. I've always said that her way of thinking is different from everyone else's. I'd rather it be her than me outdoors just now.

– Mme Amédée is always as different as she can be from everyone else,' said Françoise gently, refraining until she should be alone with the other servants from saying that she believed my grandmother was a little ‘touched'.

‘Now, see? The Benediction is over! Eulalie won't be coming, sighed my aunt; the weather must have frightened her away.

– But it's not five o'clock, Madame Octave, it's only half-past four.

– Only half-past four? And I had to raise the little curtains to get a wretched glimmer of daylight. At half-past four! One week before the Rogations! Oh, my poor Françoise, the Good Lord must be sorely vexed with us. The world is going too far these days! As my poor Octave used to say, we have forgotten the Good Lord too often and he's taking his revenge.

A bright flush enlivened my aunt's cheeks; it was Eulalie. Unfortunately, scarcely had she been shown in before Françoise returned and, with a smile that was meant to indicate her participation in the joy she was sure her words would give my aunt, articulating the syllables to show that, despite her use of the indirect style, she was reporting, good servant that she was, the very words the visitor had condescended to use:

– M. le Curé would be delighted, enchanted, if Mme Octave is not resting and could see him. M. le Curé does not wish to disturb. M. le Curé is downstairs; I told him to go into the parlour.

In fact, the curé's visits did not give my aunt as much pleasure as Françoise supposed, and the air of jubilation with which Françoise thought she must illuminate her face each time she had to announce him did not entirely correspond to the invalid's feelings. The curé (an excellent man with whom I am sorry I did not have more conversations, for if he understood nothing about the arts, he did know many etymologies), being in the habit of enlightening distinguished visitors with information about the church (he even intended to write a book about the parish of Combray), fatigued her with endless explanations that were in fact always the same. But when his visit came at the very same time as Eulalie's, it became frankly unpleasant for my aunt. She would have preferred to make the most of Eulalie and not have all her company at once. But she did not dare decline to see the curé and only
made a sign to Eulalie not to leave at the same time, so that she could keep her there by herself for a little while after he was gone.

– Monsieur le Curé, what's this they've been telling me, that a painter has set up his easel in your church and is copying a window? I must say, old as I am, I've never in my life heard of such a thing! What is the world coming to? And the ugliest part of the church, too!

– I will not go so far as to say it is the ugliest, for if there are parts of Saint-Hilaire that are well worth a visit, others are very old 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 really majestic in character; the case is the same for the tapestries of Esther, for which personally I would not give two sous, but which the experts rank immediately after the ones at Sens. I can quite see, too, that apart from certain rather realistic details, they offer some others that show a genuine power of observation. But don't talk to me about the windows! Is there any sense in leaving us with windows that give no light and even deceive our eyes with patches of colour I would never be able to define, in a church where no two flag-stones are on the same level and they refuse to replace them for me with the excuse that these are the tombstones of the Abbés de Combray and the Seigneurs de Guer-mantes, 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 notice of other people, 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 harking back to some official announcement: ‘I seem to recall there was something in it about Guermantes.' 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 in keeping at Combray itself and which is just as good, they say, as the famous windows at Chartres. Only yesterday I saw Doctor 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 polite, 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 Grace 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, whenever he saw a man in a town whose face he didn't like, 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 to 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 people 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 great thing is that you can see all in one glance things you can't usually see except one without the other, 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 a great web. Only you can't see any water; it's as though there were great clefts slicing up the town into different neighbourhoods so neatly it looks like a brioche which still holds together after it has been cut up. 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 cheered 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, but 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 managed 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 liking 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 matched', appeared to her to belong to the customs of the strange and brilliant life of the rich 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: