Page 212 - swanns-way

and I had begun to ask myself whether, setting aside the
longing and the terror that I had of making her acquain-
tance, it was not actually my duty to warn Mlle. Swann
that the fish was biting—when I was obliged to run after
my father and grandfather, who were calling me, and were
surprised that I had not followed them along the little path,
climbing up hill towards the open fields, into which they
had already turned. I found the whole path throbbing with
the fragrance of hawthorn-blossom. The hedge resembled a
series of chapels, whose walls were no longer visible under
the mountains of flowers that were heaped upon their al-
tars; while underneath, the sun cast a square of light upon
the ground, as though it had shone in upon them through a
window; the scent that swept out over me from them was as
rich, and as circumscribed in its range, as though I had been
standing before the Lady-altar, and the flowers, themselves
adorned also, held out each its little bunch of glittering sta-
mens with an air of inattention, fine, radiating ‘nerves’ in
the flamboyant style of architecture, like those which, in
church, framed the stair to the rood-loft or closed the per-
pendicular tracery of the windows, but here spread out into
pools of fleshy white, like strawberry-beds in spring. How
simple and rustic, in comparison with these, would seem
the dog-roses which, in a few weeks’ time, would be climb-
ing the same hillside path in the heat of the sun, dressed in
the smooth silk of their blushing pink bodices, which would
be undone and scattered by the first breath of wind.
But it was in vain that I lingered before the hawthorns,
to breathe in, to marshal! before my mind (which knew not

212 Swann’s Way