Page 624 - swanns-way

a great happiness when—going into the drawing-room in
the morning to kiss Mamma, who was already dressed to
go out, the coils of her black hair elaborately built up, and
her beautiful hands, plump and white, fragrant still with
soap—I had been apprised, by seeing a column of dust
standing by itself in the air above the piano, and by hearing
a barrel-organ playing, beneath the window, En revenant
de la revue, that the winter had received, until nightfall, an
unexpected, radiant visit from a day of spring. While we sat
at luncheon, by opening her window, the lady opposite had
sent packing, in the twinkling of an eye, from beside my
chair—to sweep in a single stride over the whole width of
our dining-room—a sunbeam which had lain down there
for its midday rest and returned to continue it there a mo-
ment later. At school, during the one o’clock lesson, the sun
made me sick with impatience and boredom as it let fall a
golden stream that crept to the edge of my desk, like an in-
vitation to the feast at which I could not myself arrive before
three o’clock, until the moment when Françoise came to
fetch me at the school-gate, and we made our way towards
the Champs-Elysées through streets decorated with sun-
light, dense with people, over which the balconies, detached
by the sun and made vaporous, seemed to float in front of
the houses like clouds of gold. Alas! in the Champs-Elysées
I found no Gilberte; she had not yet arrived. Motionless,
on the lawn nurtured by the invisible sun which, here and
there, kindled to a flame the point of a blade of grass, while
the pigeons that had alighted upon it had the appearance of
ancient sculptures which the gardener’s pick had heaved to

624 Swann’s Way