"
And then the apse of Combray: what am I to say of that? It was so coarse,
so devoid of artistic beauty, even of the religious spirit. From outside,
since the street crossing which it commanded was on a lower level, its
great wall was thrust upwards from a basement of unfaced ashlar, jagged
with flints, in all of which there was nothing particularly
ecclesiastical; the windows seemed to have been pierced at an abnormal
height, and its whole appearance was that of a prison wall rather than of
a church. And certainly in later years, were I to recall all the glorious
apses that I had seen, it would never enter my mind to compare with any
one of them the apse of Combray. Only, one day, turning out of a little
street in some country town, I came upon three alley-ways that converged,
and facing them an old wall, rubbed, worn, crumbling, and unusually high;
with windows pierced in it far overhead and the same asymmetrical
appearance as the apse of Combray. And at that moment I did not say to
myself, as at Chartres I might have done or at Rheims, with what strength
the religious feeling had been expressed in its construction, but
instinctively I exclaimed "The Church!"
The church! A dear, familiar friend; close pressed in the Rue
Saint-Hilaire, upon which its north door opened, by its two neighbours,
Mme.
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