Page 184 - swanns-way

Is not that a fine rendering of a moment like this? Perhaps
you have never read Paul Desjardins. Read him, my boy,
read him; in these days he is converted, they tell me, into
a preaching friar, but he used to have the most charming
water-colour touch—
Now are the woods all black, but still the sky is blue.
May you always see a blue sky overhead, my young friend;
and then, even when the time comes, which is coming now
for me, when the woods are all black, when night is fast fall-
ing, you will be able to console yourself, as I am doing, by
looking up to the sky.’ He took a cigarette from his pock-
et and stood for a long time, his eyes fixed on the horizon.
‘Goodbye, friends!’ he suddenly exclaimed, and left us.
At the hour when I usually went downstairs to find out
what there was for dinner, its preparation would already
have begun, and Françoise, a colonel with all the forces of
nature for her subalterns, as in the fairy-tales where giants
hire themselves out as scullions, would be stirring the coals,
putting the potatoes to steam, and, at the right moment, fin-
ishing over the fire those culinary masterpieces which had
been first got ready in some of the great array of vessels,
triumphs of the potter’s craft, which ranged from tubs and
boilers and cauldrons and fish kettles down to jars for game,
moulds for pastry, and tiny pannikins for cream, and in-
cluded an entire collection of pots and pans of every shape
and size. I would stop by the table, where the kitchen-maid
had shelled them, to inspect the platoons of peas, drawn
up in ranks and numbered, like little green marbles, ready
for a game; but what fascinated me would be the aspara-

184 Swann’s Way