Page 157 - swanns-way

‘What is this I have been hearing, Father, that a painter
has set up his easel in your church, and is copying one of the
windows? Old as I am, I can safely say that I have never even
heard of such a thing in all my life! What is the world com-
ing to next, I wonder! And the ugliest thing in the whole
church, too.’
‘I will not go so far as to say that it is quite the ugliest,
for, although there are certain things in Saint-Hilaire which
are well worth a visit, there are others that are very old now,
in my poor basilica, the only one in all the diocese that
has never even been restored. The Lord knows, our porch
is dirty and out of date; still, it is of a majestic character;
take, for instance, the Esther tapestries, though personally
I would not give a brass farthing for the pair of them, but
experts put them next after the ones at Sens. I can quite see,
too, that apart from certain details which are—well, a trifle
realistic, they shew features which testify to a genuine pow-
er of observation. But don’t talk to me about the windows. Is
it common sense, I ask you, to leave up windows which shut
out all the daylight, and even confuse the eyes by throwing
patches of colour, to which I should be hard put to it to give
a name, on a floor in which there are not two slabs on the
same level? And yet they refuse to renew the floor for me be-
cause, if you please, those are the tombstones of the Abbots
of Combray and the Lords of Guermantes, the old Counts,
you know, of Brabant, direct ancestors of the present Duc
de Guermantes, and of his Duchesse also, since she was a
lady of the Guermantes family, and married her cousin.’
(My grandmother, whose steady refusal to take any inter-

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