Page 190 - swanns-way

side which her egg is laid, will furnish the larva, when it
is hatched, with a tamed and inoffensive quarry, incapable
either of flight or of resistance, but perfectly fresh for the
larder: in the same way Françoise had adopted, to minister
to her permanent and unfaltering resolution to render the
house uninhabitable to any other servant, a series of crafty
and pitiless stratagems. Many years later we discovered
that, if we had been fed on asparagus day after day through-
out that whole season, it was because the smell of the plants
gave the poor kitchen-maid, who had to prepare them, such
violent attacks of asthma that she was finally obliged to
leave my aunt’s service.
Alas! we had definitely to alter our opinion of M. Legran-
din. On one-of the Sundays following our meeting with him
on the Pont-Vieux, after which my father had been forced to
confess himself mistaken, as mass drew to an end, and, with
the sunshine and the noise of the outer world, something
else invaded the church, an atmosphere so far from sacred
that Mme. Goupil, Mme. Percepied (all those, in fact, who
a moment ago, when I arrived a little late, had been sitting
motionless, their eyes fixed on their prayer-books; who, I
might even have thought, had not seen me come in, had not
their feet moved slightly to push away the little kneeling-
desk which was preventing me from getting to my chair)
began in loud voices to discuss with us all manner of ut-
terly mundane topics, as though we were already outside in
the Square, we saw, standing on the sun-baked steps of the
porch, dominating the many-coloured tumult of the mar-
ket, Legrandin himself, whom the husband of the lady we

190 Swann’s Way