Page 643 - swanns-way

upon me unawares.
But most often of all, on days when I was not to see Gil-
berte, as I had heard that Mme. Swann walked almost every
day along the Allée des Acacias, round the big lake, and in
the Allée de la Reine Marguerite, I would guide Françoise in
thé direction of the Bois de Boulogne. It was to me like one
of those zoological gardens in which one sees assembled to-
gether a variety of flora, and contrasted effects in landscape;
where from a hill one passes to a grotto, a meadow, rocks, a
stream, a trench, another hill, a marsh, but knows that they
are there only to enable the hippopotamus, zebra, crocodile,
rabbit, bear and heron to disport themselves in a natural
or a picturesque setting; this, the Bois, equally complex,
uniting a multitude of little worlds, distinct and separate—
placing a stage set with red trees, American oaks, like an
experimental forest in Virginia, next to a fir-wood by the
edge of the lake, or to a forest grove from which would sud-
denly emerge, in her lissom covering of furs, with the large,
appealing eyes of a dumb animal, a hastening walker—was
the Garden of Woman; and like the myrtle-alley in the Ae-
neid, planted for their delight with trees of one kind only,
the Allée des Acacias was thronged by the famous Beauties
of the day. As, from a long way off, the sight of the jutting
crag from which it dives into the pool thrills with joy the
children who know that they are going to behold the seal,
long before I reached the acacia-alley, their fragrance, scat-
tered abroad, would make me feel that I was approaching
the incomparable presence of a vegetable personality, strong
and tender; then, as I drew near, the sight of their topmost

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