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so simple a matter, and so had replied, with no further en-
lightenment of the other’s surprise at seeing us already in
the dining-room: ‘You see, it’s Saturday.’ On reaching this
point in the story, Françoise would pause to wipe the tears
of merriment from her eyes, and then, to add to her own
enjoyment, would prolong the dialogue, inventing a fur-
ther reply for the visitor to whom the word ‘Saturday’ had
conveyed nothing. And so far from our objecting to these
interpolations, we would feel that the story was not yet long
enough, and would rally her with: ‘Oh, but surely he said
something else as well. There was more than that, the first
time you told it.’
My great-aunt herself would lay aside her work, and raise
her head and look on at us over her glasses.
The day had yet another characteristic feature, namely,
that during May we used to go out on Saturday evenings af-
ter dinner to the ‘Month of Mary’ devotions.
As we were liable, there, to meet M. Vinteuil, who held
very strict views on ‘the deplorable untidiness of young peo-
ple, which seems to be encouraged in these days,’ my mother
would first see that there was nothing out of order in my ap-
pearance, and then we would set out for the church. It was in
these ‘Month of Mary’ services that I can remember having
first fallen in love with hawthorn-blossom. The hawthorn
was not merely in the church, for there, holy ground as it
was, we had all of us a right of entry; but, arranged upon the
altar itself, inseparable from the mysteries in whose celebra-
tion it was playing a part, it thrust in among the tapers and
the sacred vessels its rows of branches, tied to one another

170 Swann’s Way