Page 159 - swanns-way

I said to him, do you find so extraordinary in this window,
which is, if anything, a little dingier than the rest?’
‘I am sure that if you were to ask his Lordship,’ said my
aunt in a resigned tone, for she had begun to feel that she
was going to be ‘tired,’ ‘he would never refuse you a new
window.’
‘You may depend upon it, Mme. Octave,’ replied the
Curé. ‘Why, it was just his Lordship himself who started
the outcry about the window, by proving that it represented
Gilbert the Bad, a Lord of Guermantes and a direct descen-
dant of Geneviève de Brabant, who was a daughter of the
House of Guermantes, receiving absolution from Saint Hi-
laire.’
‘But I don’t see where Saint Hilaire comes in.’
‘Why yes, have you never noticed, in the corner of the
window, a lady in a yellow robe? Very well, that is Saint Hi-
laire, who is also known, you will remember, in certain parts
of the country as Saint Illiers, Saint Hèlier, and even, in the
Jura, Saint Ylie. But these various corruptions of Sanctus
Hilarius are by no means the most curious that have oc-
curred in the names of the blessed Saints. Take, for example,
my good Eulalie, the case of your own patron, Sancta Eula-
lia; do you know what she has become in Burgundy? Saint
Eloi, nothing more nor less! The lady has become a gentle-
man. Do you hear that, Eulalie, after you are dead they will
make a man of you!’
‘Father will always have his joke.’
‘Gilbert’s brother, Charles the Stammerer, was a pious
prince, but, having early in life lost his father, Pepin the

159