Page 97 - swanns-way

ally beautiful, but there is something in its quaint old face
which pleases me. If it could play the piano, I am sure it
would really play.’ And when she gazed on it, when her eyes
followed the gentle tension, the fervent inclination of its
stony slopes which drew together as they rose, like hands
joined in prayer, she would absorb herself so utterly in the
outpouring of the spire that her gaze seemed to leap up-
wards with it; her lips at the same time curving in a friendly
smile for the worn old stones of which the setting sun now
illumined no more than the topmost pinnacles, which, at
the point where they entered that zone of sunlight and were
softened and sweetened by it, seemed to have mounted sud-
denly far higher, to have become truly remote, like a song
whose singer breaks into falsetto, an octave above the ac-
companying air.
It was the steeple of Saint-Hilaire which shaped and
crowned and consecrated every occupation, every hour of
the day, every point of view in the town. From my bedroom
window I could discern no more than its base, which had
been freshly covered with slates; but when on Sundays I saw
these, in the hot light of a summer morning, blaze like a
black sun I would say to myself: ‘Good heavens! nine o’clock!
I must get ready for mass at once if I am to have time to
go in and kiss aunt Léonie first,’ and I would know exactly
what was the colour of the sunlight upon the Square, I could
feel the heat and dust of the market, the shade behind the
blinds of the shop into which Mamma would perhaps go on
her way to mass, penetrating its odour of unbleached cali-
co, to purchase a handkerchief or something, of which the

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