Page 95 - swanns-way

which they leaned, if my eyes could discern no interval, my
mind preserved the impression of an abyss.
>From a long way off one could distinguish and identify
the steeple of Saint-Hilaire inscribing its unforgettable form
upon a horizon beneath which Combray had not yet ap-
peared; when from the train which brought us down from
Paris at Easter-time my father caught sight of it, as it slipped
into every fold of the sky in turn, its little iron cock veering
continually in all directions, he would say: ‘Come, get your
wraps together, we are there.’ And on one of the longest
walks we ever took from Combray there was a spot where
the narrow road emerged suddenly on to an immense plain,
closed at the horizon by strips of forest over which rose and
stood alone the fine point of Saint-Hilaire’s steeple, but so
sharpened and so pink that it seemed to be no more than
sketched on the sky by the finger-nail of a painter anxious
to give to such a landscape, to so pure a piece of ‘nature,’ this
little sign of art, this single indication of human existence.
As one drew near it and could make out the remains of the
square tower, half in ruins, which still stood by its side,
though without rivalling it in height, one was struck, first
of all, by the tone, reddish and sombre, of its stones; and on
a misty morning in autumn one would have called it, to see
it rising above the violet thunder-cloud of the vineyards, a
ruin of purple, almost the colour of the wild vine.
Often in the Square, as we came home, my grandmother
would make me stop to look up at it. From the tower win-
dows, placed two and two, one pair above another, with that
right and original proportion in their spacing to which not

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