Page 208 - swanns-way

other, shut them up, so to speak, far apart and unaware of
each other’s existence, in the sealed vessels—between which
there could be no communication—of separate afternoons.
When we had decided to go the ‘Méséglise way’ we would
start (without undue haste, and even if the sky were clouded
over, since the walk was not very long, and did not take us
too far from home), as though we were not going anywhere
in particular, by the front-door of my aunt’s house, which
opened on to the Rue du Saint-Esprit. We would be greeted
by the gunsmith, we would drop our letters into the box, we
would tell Théodore, from Françoise, as we passed, that she
had run out of oil or coffee, and we would leave the town
by the road which ran along the white fence of M. Swann’s
park. Before reaching it we would be met on our way by
the scent of his lilac-trees, come out to welcome strangers.
Out of the fresh little green hearts of their foliage the lilacs
raised inquisitively over the fence of the park their plumes of
white or purple blossom, which glowed, even in the shade,
with the sunlight in which they had been bathed. Some of
them, half-concealed by the little tiled house, called the Ar-
chers’ Lodge, in which Swann’s keeper lived, overtopped its
gothic gable with their rosy minaret. The nymphs of spring
would have seemed coarse and vulgar in comparison with
these young houris, who retained, in this French garden,
the pure and vivid colouring of a Persian miniature. De-
spite my desire to throw my arms about their pliant forms
and to draw down towards me the starry locks that crowned
their fragrant heads, we would pass them by without stop-
ping, for my parents had ceased to visit Tansonville since

208 Swann’s Way