Page 124 - swanns-way

something more concrete and more striking to the lesson
they imparted. And even in the case of the poor kitchen-
maid, was not our attention incessantly drawn to her belly
by the load which filled it; and in the same way, again, are
not the thoughts of men and women in the agony of death
often turned towards the practical, painful, obscure, in-
ternal, intestinal aspect, towards that ‘seamy side’ of death
which is, as it happens, the side that death actually presents
to them and forces them to feel, a side which far more close-
ly resembles a crushing burden, a difficulty in breathing, a
destroying thirst, than the abstract idea to which we are ac-
customed to give the name of Death?
There must have been a strong element of reality in those
Virtues and Vices of Padua, since they appeared to me to
be as much alive as the pregnant servant-girl, while she
herself appeared scarcely less allegorical than they. And,
quite possibly, this lack (or seeming lack) of participation
by a person’s soul in the significant marks of its own spe-
cial virtue has, apart from its aesthetic meaning, a reality
which, if not strictly psychological, may at least be called
physiognomical. Later on, when, in the course of my life,
I have had occasion to meet with, in convents for instance,
literally saintly examples of practical charity, they have
generally had the brisk, decided, undisturbed, and slight-
ly brutal air of a busy surgeon, the face in which one can
discern no commiseration, no tenderness at the sight of suf-
fering humanity, and no fear of hurting it, the face devoid of
gentleness or sympathy, the sublime face of true goodness.
Then while the kitchen-maid—who, all unawares, made

124 Swann’s Way