Page 103 - swanns-way

have to go back to Paris, to squeeze back into my niche.
‘Oh, I admit,’ he went on, with his own peculiar smile,
gently ironical, disillusioned and vague, ‘I have every use-
less thing in the world in my house there. The only thing
wanting is the necessary thing, a great patch of open sky
like this. Always try to keep a patch of sky above your life,
little boy,’ he added, turning to me. ‘You have a soul in you
of rare quality, an artist’s nature; never let it starve for lack
of what it needs.’
When, on our reaching the house, my aunt would send
to ask us whether Mme. Goupil had indeed arrived late
for mass, not one of us could inform her. Instead, we in-
creased her anxiety by telling her that there was a painter
at work in the church copying the window of Gilbert the
Bad. Françoise was at once dispatched to the grocer’s, but
returned empty-handed owing to the absence of Théodore,
whose dual profession of choirman, with a part in the main-
tenance of the fabric, and of grocer’s assistant gave him not
only relations with all sections of society, but an encyclo-
paedic knowledge of their affairs.
‘Ah!’ my aunt would sigh, ‘I wish it were time for Eula-
lie to come. She is really the only person who will be able to
tell me.’
Eulalie was a limping, energetic, deaf spinster who had
‘retired’ after the death of Mme. de la Bretonnerie, with
whom she had been in service from her childhood, and had
then taken a room beside the church, from which she would
incessantly emerge, either to attend some service, or, when
there was no service, to say a prayer by herself or to give

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