Page 109 - swanns-way

little temple of Venus. It would be overflowing with the of-
ferings of the milkman, the fruiterer, the greengrocer, come
sometimes from distant villages to dedicate here the first-
fruits of their fields. And its roof was always surmounted by
the cooing of a dove.
In earlier days I would not have lingered in the sacred
grove which surrounded this temple, for, before going up-
stairs to read, I would steal into the little sitting-room which
my uncle Adolphe, a brother of my grandfather and an old
soldier who had retired from the service as a major, used to
occupy on the ground floor, a room which, even when its
opened windows let in the heat, if not actually the rays of the
sun which seldom penetrated so far, would never fail to emit
that vague and yet fresh odour, suggesting at once an open-
air and an old-fashioned kind of existence, which sets and
keeps the nostrils dreaming when one goes into a disused
gun-room. But for some years now I had not gone into my
uncle Adolphe’s room, since he no longer came to Combray
on account of a quarrel which had arisen between him and
my family, by my fault, and in the following circumstanc-
es: Once or twice every month, in Paris, I used to be sent
to pay him a. visit, as he was finishing his luncheon, wear-
ing a plain alpaca coat, and waited upon by his servant in a
working-jacket of striped linen, purple and white. He would
complain that I had not been to see him for a long time; that
he was being neglected; he would offer me a marchpane or a
tangerine, and we would cross a room in which no one ever
sat, whose fire was never lighted, whose walls were picked
out with gilded mouldings, its ceiling painted blue in imita-

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