Page 222 - swanns-way

ening and refreshing charm of repose.
My aunt did not go to see the pink hawthorn in the
hedge, but at all hours of the day I would ask the rest of my
family whether she was not going to go, whether she used
not, at one time, to go often to Tansonville, trying to make
them speak of Mile. Swann’s parents and grandparents,
who appeared to me to be as great and glorious as gods. The
name, which had for me become almost mythological, of
Swann—when I talked with my family I would grow sick
with longing to hear them utter it; I dared not pronounce
it myself, but I would draw them into a discussion of mat-
ters which led naturally to Gilberte and her family, in which
she was involved, in speaking of which I would feel myself
not too remotely banished from her company; and I would
suddenly force my father (by pretending, for instance, to be-
lieve that my grandfather’s business had been in our family
before his day, or that the hedge with the pink hawthorn
which my aunt Léonie wished to visit was on common
ground) to correct my statements, to say, as though in op-
position to me and of his own accord: ‘No, no, the business
belonged to Swann’s father, that hedge is part of Swann’s
park.’ And then I would be obliged to pause for breath; so
stifling was the pressure, upon that part of me where it was
for ever inscribed, of that name which, at the moment when
I heard it, seemed to me fuller, more portentous than any
other name, because it was burdened with the weight of all
the occasions on which I had secretly uttered it in my mind.
It caused me a pleasure which I was ashamed to have dared
to demand from my parents, for so great was it that to have

222 Swann’s Way