Page 214 - swanns-way

which, one imagines, one will be better able to ‘take in’ when
one has looked away, for a moment, at something else; but in
vain did I shape my fingers into a frame, so as to have noth-
ing but the hawthorns before my eyes; the sentiment which
they aroused in me remained obscure and vague, struggling
and failing to free itself, to float across and become one with
the flowers. They themselves offered me no enlightenment,
and I could not call upon any other flowers to satisfy this
mysterious longing. And then, inspiring me with that rap-
ture which we feel on seeing a work by our favourite painter
quite different from any of those that we already know, or,
better still, when some one has taken us and set us down in
front of a picture of which we have hitherto seen no more
than a pencilled sketch, or when a piece of music which we
have heard played over on the piano bursts out again in our
ears with all the splendour and fullness of an orchestra, my
grandfather called me to him, and, pointing to the hedge of
Tansonville, said: ‘You are fond of hawthorns; just look at
this pink one; isn’t it pretty?’
And it was indeed a hawthorn, but one whose flowers
were pink, and lovelier even than the white. It, too, was in
holiday attire, for one of those days which are the only true
holidays, the holy days of religion, because they are not ap-
pointed by any capricious accident, as secular holidays are
appointed, upon days which are not specially ordained for
such observances, which have nothing about them that is es-
sentially festal—but it was attired even more richly than the
rest, for the flowers which clung to its branches, one above
another, so thickly as to leave no part of the tree undeco-

214 Swann’s Way