Swann's Way
a shrubbery of laurels; while I waited for her I was pacing the broad
lawn, of meagre close-cropped grass already faded by the sun, dominated,
at its far end, by a statue rising from a fountain, in front of which a
little girl with reddish hair was playing with a shuttlecock; when, from
the path, another little girl, who was putting on her cloak and covering
up her battledore, called out sharply: "Good-bye, Gilberte, I'm going
home now; don't forget, we're coming to you this evening, after dinner."
The name Gilberte passed close by me, evoking all the more forcibly her
whom it labelled in that it did not merely refer to her, as one speaks
of a man in his absence, but was directly addressed to her; it passed
thus close by me, in action, so to speak, with a force that
increased with the curve of its trajectory and as it drew near to
its target;--carrying in its wake, I could feel, the knowledge, the
impression of her to whom it was addressed that belonged not to me but
to the friend who called to her, everything that, while she uttered the
words, she more or less vividly reviewed, possessed in her memory, of
their daily intimacy, of the visits that they paid to each other, of
that unknown existence which was all the more inaccessible, all the more
painful to me from being, conversely, so familiar, so tractable to this
happy girl who let her message brush past me without my being able to
penetrate its surface, who flung it on the air with a light-hearted cry:
letting float in the atmosphere the delicious attar which that message
had distilled, by touching them with precision, from certain invisible
points in Mlle. Swann's life, from the evening to come, as it would be,
after dinner, at her home,--forming, on its celestial passage through
the midst of the children and their nursemaids, a little cloud,
exquisitely coloured, like the cloud that, curling over one of Poussin's
gardens, reflects minutely, like a cloud in the opera, teeming with
chariots and horses, some apparition of the life of the gods; casting,
finally, on that ragged grass, at the spot on which she stood (at once a
scrap of withered lawn and a moment in the afternoon of the fair player,
who continued to beat up and catch her shuttlecock until a governess,
with a blue feather in her hat, had called her away) a marvellous little
band of light, of the colour of heliotrope, spread over the lawn like a
carpet on which I could not tire of treading to and fro with lingering
feet, nostalgic and profane, while Françoise shouted: "Come on, button
up your coat, look, and let's get away!" and I remarked for the first
time how common her speech was, and that she had, alas, no blue feather
in her hat.
Only, would _she_ come again to the Champs-Elysées? Next day she was
not there; but I saw her on the following days; I spent all my time
revolving round the spot where she was at play with her friends, to such
effect that once, when, they found, they were not enough to make up a
prisoner's base, she sent one of them to ask me if I cared to complete
their side, and from that day I played with her whenever she came.
But this did not happen every day; there were days when she had
been prevented from coming by her lessons, by her catechism, by a
luncheon-party, by the whole of that life, separated from my own, which
twice only, condensed into the name of Gilberte, I had felt pass so
painfully close to me, in the hawthorn lane near Combray and on the
grass of the Champs-Elysées. On such days she would have told us
beforehand that we should not see her; if it were because of her
lessons, she would say: "It is too tiresome, I sha'n't be able to come
to-morrow; you will all be enjoying yourselves here without me," with an
air of regret which to some extent consoled me; if, on the other hand,
she had been invited to a party, and I, not knowing this, asked her
whether she was coming to play with us, she would reply: "Indeed I hope
not! Indeed I hope Mamma will let me go to my friend's." But on these
days I did at least know that I should not see her, whereas on others,
without any warning, her mother would take her for a drive, or some such
thing, and next day she would say: "Oh, yes! I went out with Mamma,"
as though it had been the most natural thing in the world, and not the
greatest possible misfortune for some one else. There were also the days
of bad weather on which her governess, afraid, on her own account, of
the rain, would not bring Gilberte to the Champs-Elysées.
And so, if the heavens were doubtful, from early morning I would not
cease to interrogate them, observing all the omens. If I saw the lady
opposite, just inside her window, putting on her hat, I would say to
myself: "That lady is going out; it must, therefore, be weather in which
one can go out. Why should not Gilberte do the same as that lady?" But
the day grew dark. My mother said that it might clear again, that one
burst of sunshine would be enough, but that more probably it would rain;
and if it rained, of what use would it be to go to the Champs-Elysées?
And so, from breakfast-time, my anxious eyes never left the uncertain,
clouded sky. It remained dark. Outside the window, the balcony was grey.
Suddenly, on its sullen stone, I did not indeed see a less negative
colour, but I felt as it were an effort towards a less negative colour,
the pulsation of a hesitating ray that struggled to discharge its light.
A moment later the balcony was as pale and luminous as a standing water
at dawn, and a thousand shadows from the iron-work of its balustrade had
come to rest on it. A breath of wind dispersed them; the stone grew
dark again, but, like tamed creatures, they returned; they began,
imperceptibly, to grow lighter, and by one of those continuous
crescendos, such as, in music, at the end of an overture, carry a single
note to the extreme fortissimo, making it pass rapidly through all the
intermediate stages, I saw it attain to that fixed, unalterable gold of
fine days, on which the sharply cut shadows of the wrought iron of the
balustrade were outlined in black like a capricious vegetation, with a
fineness in the delineation of their smallest details which seemed to
indicate a deliberate application, an artist's satisfaction, and with so
much relief, so velvety a bloom in the restfulness of their sombre
and happy mass that in truth those large and leafy shadows which lay
reflected on that lake of sunshine seemed aware that they were pledges
of happiness and peace of mind.
Brief, fading ivy, climbing, fugitive flora, the most colourless, the
most depressing, to many minds, of all that creep on walls or decorate
windows; to me the dearest of them all, from the day when it appeared
upon our balcony, like the very shadow of the presence of Gilberte,
who was perhaps already in the Champs-Elysées, and as soon as I arrived
there would greet me with: "Let's begin at once. You are on my side."
Frail, swept away by a breath, but at the same time in harmony, not with
the season, with the hour; a promise of that immediate pleasure which
the day will deny or fulfil, and thereby of the one paramount immediate
pleasure, the pleasure of loving and of being loved; more soft,
more warm upon the stone than even moss is; alive, a ray of sunshine
sufficing for its birth, and for the birth of joy, even in the heart of
winter.
And on those days when all other vegetation had disappeared, when the
fine jerkins of green leather which covered the trunks of the old trees
were hidden beneath the snow; after the snow had ceased to fall, but
when the sky was still too much overcast for me to hope that Gilberte
would venture out, then suddenly--inspiring my mother to say: "Look,
it's quite fine now; I think you might perhaps try going to the
Champs-Elysées after all."--on the mantle of snow that swathed the
balcony, the sun had appeared and was stitching seams of gold, with
embroidered patches of dark shadow. That day we found no one there, or
else a solitary girl, on the point of departure, who assured me that
Gilberte was not coming. The chairs, deserted by the imposing but
uninspiring company of governesses, stood empty. Only, near the grass,
was sitting a lady of uncertain age who came in all weathers, dressed
always in an identical style, splendid and sombre, to make whose
acquaintance I would have, at that period, sacrificed, had it lain in my
power, all the greatest opportunities in my life to come. For Gilberte
went up every day to speak to her; she used to ask Gilberte for news of
her "dearest mother" and it struck me that, if I had known her, I should
have been for Gilberte some one wholly different, some one who knew
people in her parents' world. While her grandchildren played together at
a little distance, she would sit and read the Débats, which she called
"My old _Débats_!" as, with an aristocratic familiarity, she would say,
speaking of the police-sergeant or the woman who let the chairs, "My
old friend the police-sergeant," or "The chair-keeper and I, who are old
friends."
Françoise found it too cold to stand about, so we walked to the Pont
de la Concorde to see the Seine frozen over, on to which everyone, even
children, walked fearlessly, as though upon an enormous whale, stranded,
defenceless, and about to be cut up. We returned to the Champs-Elysées;
I was growing sick with misery between the motionless wooden horses and
the white lawn, caught in a net of black paths from which the snow had
been cleared, while the statue that surmounted it held in its hand a
long pendent icicle which seemed to explain its gesture. The old lady
herself, having folded up her _Débats_, asked a passing nursemaid
the time, thanking her with "How very good of you!" then begged the
road-sweeper to tell her grandchildren to come, as she felt cold, adding
"A thousand thanks. I am sorry to give you so much trouble!" Suddenly
the sky was rent in two: between the punch-and-judy and the horses,
against the opening horizon, I had just seen, like a miraculous sign,
Mademoiselle's blue feather. And now Gilberte was running at full speed
towards me, sparkling and rosy beneath a cap trimmed with fur, enlivened
by the cold, by being late, by her anxiety for a game; shortly before
she reached me, she slipped on a piece of ice and, either to regain her
balance, or because it appeared to her graceful, or else pretending
that she was on skates, it was with outstretched arms that she smilingly
advanced, as though to embrace me. "Bravo! bravo! that's splendid;
'topping,' I should say, like you--'sporting,' I suppose I ought to say,
only I'm a hundred-and-one, a woman of the old school," exclaimed the
lady, uttering, on behalf of the voiceless Champs-Elysées, their thanks
to Gilberte for having come, without letting herself be frightened
away by the weather. "You are like me, faithful at all costs to our old
Champs-Elysées; we are two brave souls! You wouldn't believe me, I dare
say, if I told you that I love them, even like this. This snow (I know,
you'll laugh at me), it makes me think of ermine!" And the old lady
began to laugh herself.
The first of these days--to which the snow, a symbol of the powers that
were able to deprive me of the sight of Gilberte, imparted the sadness
of a day of separation, almost the aspect of a day of departure, because
it changed the outward form and almost forbade the use of the customary
scene of our only encounters, now altered, covered, as it were, in
dust-sheets--that day, none the less, marked a stage in the progress of
my love, for it was, in a sense, the first sorrow that she was to share
with me. There were only our two selves of our little company, and to
be thus alone with her was not merely like a beginning of intimacy, but
also on her part--as though she had come there solely to please me, and