Page 165 - swanns-way

she would declaim, with the sidelong, insinuating glance of
Joash, thinking of Athaliah alone when he says that the

prosperity
Of wicked men runs like a torrent past,
And soon is spent.

But on this memorable afternoon, when the Curé had
come as well, and by his interminable visit had drained my
aunt’s strength, Françoise followed Eulalie from the room,
saying: ‘Mme. Octave, I will leave you to rest; you look ut-
terly tired out.’
And my aunt answered her not a word, breathing a sigh
so faint that it seemed it must prove her last, and lying there
with closed eyes, as though already dead. But hardly had
Françoise arrived downstairs, when four peals of a bell,
pulled with the utmost violence, reverberated through the
house, and my aunt, sitting erect upon her bed, called out:
‘Has Eulalie gone yet? Would you believe it; I forgot to ask
her whether Mme. Goupil arrived in church before the El-
evation. Run after her, quick!’
But Françoise returned alone, having failed to overtake
Eulalie. ‘It is most provoking,’ said my aunt, shaking her
head. ‘The one important thing that I had to ask her.’
In this way life went by for my aunt Léonie, always the
same, in the gentle uniformity of what she called, with a
pretence of deprecation but with a deep tenderness, her ‘lit-
tle jog-trot.’ Respected by all and sundry, not merely in her
own house, where every one of us, having learned the futili-

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