Page 64 - swanns-way

versation, now the note of joy which might have distressed
some mother who had long ago lost a child, now the recollec-
tion of an event or anniversary which might have reminded
some old gentleman of the burden of his years, now the
household topic which might have bored some young man
of letters. And so, when she read aloud the prose of George
Sand, prose which is everywhere redolent of that generosity
and moral distinction which Mamma had learned from my
grandmother to place above all other qualities in life, and
which I was not to teach her until much later to refrain from
placing, in the same way, above all other qualities in litera-
ture; taking pains to banish from her voice any weakness or
affectation which might have blocked its channel for that
powerful stream of language, she supplied all the natural
tenderness, all the lavish sweetness which they demanded to
phrases which seemed to have been composed for her voice,
and which were all, so to speak, within her compass. She
came to them with the tone that they required, with the cor-
dial accent which existed before they were, which dictated
them, but which is not to be found in the words themselves,
and by these means she smoothed away, as she read on, any
harshness there might be or discordance in the tenses of
verbs, endowing the imperfect and the preterite with all the
sweetness which there is in generosity, all the melancholy
which there is in love; guided the sentence that was draw-
ing to an end towards that which was waiting to begin, now
hastening, now slackening the pace of the syllables so as to
bring them, despite their difference of quantity, into a uni-
form rhythm, and breathed into this quite ordinary prose a

64 Swann’s Way