Page 62 - swanns-way

my grandmother would have thought it sordid to concern
herself too closely with the solidity of any piece of furni-
ture in which could still be discerned a flourish, a smile, a
brave conceit of the past. And even what in such pieces sup-
plied a material need, since it did so in a manner to which
we are no longer accustomed, was as charming to her as
one of those old forms of speech in which we can still see
traces of a metaphor whose fine point has been worn away
by the rough usage of our modern tongue. In precisely the
same way the pastoral novels of George Sand, which she was
giving me for my birthday, were regular lumber-rooms of
antique furniture, full of expressions that have fallen out of
use and returned as imagery, such as one finds now only in
country dialects. And my grandmother had bought them in
preference to other books, just as she would have preferred
to take a house that had a gothic dovecot, or some other
such piece of antiquity as would have a pleasant effect on
the mind, filling it with a nostalgic longing for impossible
journeys through the realms of time.
Mamma sat down by my bed; she had chosen François
le Champi, whose reddish cover and incomprehensible title
gave it a distinct personality in my eyes and a mysterious
attraction. I had not then read any real novels. I had heard
it said that George Sand was a typical novelist. That pre-
pared me in advance to imagine that François le Champi
contained something inexpressibly delicious. The course of
the narrative, where it tended to arouse curiosity or melt
to pity, certain modes of expression which disturb or sad-
den the reader, and which, with a little experience, he may

62 Swann’s Way