I wrote to my mother
begging her to come upstairs for an important reason which I could not put
in writing. My fear was that Francoise, my aunt's cook who used to be put
in charge of me when I was at Combray, might refuse to take my note. I had
a suspicion that, in her eyes, to carry a message to my mother when there
was a stranger in the room would appear flatly inconceivable, just as it
would be for the door-keeper of a theatre to hand a letter to an actor
upon the stage. For things which might or might not be done she possessed
a code at once imperious, abundant, subtle, and uncompromising on points
themselves imperceptible or irrelevant, which gave it a resemblance to
those ancient laws which combine such cruel ordinances as the massacre of
infants at the breast with prohibitions, of exaggerated refinement,
against "seething the kid in his mother's milk," or "eating of the sinew
which is upon the hollow of the thigh." This code, if one could judge it
by the sudden obstinacy which she would put into her refusal to carry out
certain of our instructions, seemed to have foreseen such social
complications and refinements of fashion as nothing in Francoise's
surroundings or in her career as a servant in a village household could
have put into her head; and we were obliged to assume that there was
latent in her some past existence in the ancient history of France, noble
and little understood, just as there is in those manufacturing towns where
old mansions still testify to their former courtly days, and chemical
workers toil among delicately sculptured scenes of the Miracle of
Theophilus or the Quatre Fils Aymon.
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