Page 75 - swanns-way

of that country order which (just as in certain climes whole
tracts of air or ocean are illuminated or scented by myri-
ads of protozoa which we cannot see) fascinate our sense of
smell with the countless odours springing from their own
special virtues, wisdom, habits, a whole secret system of
life, invisible, superabundant and profoundly moral, which
their atmosphere holds in solution; smells natural enough
indeed, and coloured by circumstances as are those of the
neighbouring countryside, but already humanised, domes-
ticated, confined, an exquisite, skilful, limpid jelly, blending
all the fruits of the season which have left the orchard for
the store-room, smells changing with the year, but plenish-
ing, domestic smells, which compensate for the sharpness
of hoar frost with the sweet savour of warm bread, smells
lazy and punctual as a village clock, roving smells, pious
smells; rejoicing in a peace which brings only an increase
of anxiety, and in a prosiness which serves as a deep source
of poetry to the stranger who passes through their midst
without having lived amongst them. The air of those rooms
was saturated with the fine bouquet of a silence so nourish-
ing, so succulent that I could not enter them without a sort
of greedy enjoyment, particularly on those first mornings,
chilly still, of the Easter holidays, when I could taste it more
fully, because I had just arrived then at Combray: before I
went in to wish my aunt good day I would be kept waiting
a little time in the outer room, where the sun, a wintry sun
still, had crept in to warm itself before the fire, lighted al-
ready between its two brick sides and plastering all the room
and everything in it with a smell of soot, making the room

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