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ulously embalmed, and flower-like, since it was called the
City of the Lilies, and its Cathedral, Our Lady of the Flower.
As for Balbec, it was one of those names in which, as on an
old piece of Norman pottery that still keeps the colour of
the earth from which it was fashioned, one sees depicted
still the representation of some long-abolished custom, of
some feudal right, of the former condition of some place,
of an obsolete way of pronouncing the language, which had
shaped and wedded its incongruous syllables and which I
never doubted that I should find spoken there at once, even
by the inn-keeper who would pour me out coffee and milk
on my arrival, taking me down to watch the turbulent sea,
unchained, before the church; to whom I lent the aspect,
disputatious, solemn and mediaeval, of some character in
one of the old romances.
Had my health definitely improved, had my parents al-
lowed me, if not actually to go down to stay at Balbec, at
least to take, just once, so as to become acquainted with the
architecture and landscapes of Normandy or of Brittany,
that one twenty-two train into which I had so often clam-
bered in imagination, I should have preferred to stop, and
to alight from it, at the most beautiful of its towns; but in
vain might I compare and contrast them; how was one to
choose, any more than between individual people, who are
not interchangeable, between Bayeux, so lofty in its noble
coronet of rusty lace, whose highest point caught the light
of the old gold of its second syllable; Vitré, whose acute ac-
cent barred its ancient glass with wooden lozenges; gentle
Lamballe, whose whiteness ranged from egg-shell yellow

600 Swann’s Way