Page 504 - swanns-way

of rooms, representing the departments of indoor service
which they controlled, and doing homage for them to the
guests, a gate-keeper, a major-domo, a steward (worthy men
who spent the rest of the week in semi-independence in their
own domains, dined there by themselves like small shop-
keepers, and might to-morrow lapse to the plebeian service
of some successful doctor or industrial magnate), scrupu-
lous in carrying out to the letter all the instructions that had
been heaped upon them before they were allowed to don
the brilliant livery which they wore only at long intervals,
and in which they did not feel altogether at their ease, stood
each in the arcade of his doorway, their splendid pomp tem-
pered by a democratic good-fellowship, like saints in their
niches, and a gigantic usher, dressed Swiss Guard fashion,
like the beadle in a church, struck the pavement with his
staff as each fresh arrival passed him. Coming to the top
of the staircase, up which he had been followed by a ser-
vant with a pallid countenance and a small pigtail clubbed
at the back of his head, like one of Goya’s sacristans or a ta-
bellion in an old play, Swann passed by an office in which
the lackeys, seated like notaries before their massive regis-
ters, rose solemnly to their feet and inscribed his name. He
next crossed a little hall which—just as certain rooms are
arranged by their owners to serve as the setting for a single
work of art (from which they take their name), and, in their
studied bareness, contain nothing else besides—displayed
to him as he entered it, like some priceless effigy by Ben-
venuto Cellini of an armed watchman, a young footman,
his body slightly bent forward, rearing above his crimson

504 Swann’s Way