Page 209 - swanns-way

Swann’s marriage, and, so as not to appear to be looking
into his park, we would, instead of taking the road which
ran beside its boundary and then climbed straight up to the
open fields, choose another way, which led in the same di-
rection, but circuitously, and brought us out rather too far
from home.
One day my grandfather said to my ‘father: ‘Don’t you
remember Swann’s telling us yesterday that his wife and
daughter had gone off to Rheims and that he was taking the
opportunity of spending a day or two in Paris? We might go
along by the park, since the ladies are not at home; that will
make it a little shorter.’
We stopped for a moment by the fence. Lilac-time was
nearly over; some of the trees still thrust aloft, in tall purple
chandeliers, their tiny balls of blossom, but in many places
among their foliage where, only a week before, they had still
been breaking in waves of fragrant foam, these were now
spent and shrivelled and discoloured, a hollow scum, dry
and scentless. My grandfather pointed out to my father in
what respects the appearance of the place was still the same,
and how far it had altered since the walk that he had taken
with old M. Swann, on the day of his wife’s death; and he
seized the opportunity to tell us, once again, the story of
that walk.
In front of us a path bordered with nasturtiums rose in
the full glare of the sun towards the house. But to our right
the park stretched away into the distance, on level ground.
Overshadowed by the tall trees which stood close around
it, an ‘ornamental water’ had been constructed by Swann’s

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