Eulalie's ring, if it sounded from the front door at the very end
of the day, when she was no longer expecting it, would almost make her
ill. For the fact was that on Sundays she thought of nothing else than
this visit, and the moment that our luncheon was ended Francoise would
become impatient for us to leave the dining-room so that she might go
upstairs to 'occupy' my aunt. But--and this more than ever from the day on
which fine weather definitely set in at Combray--the proud hour deg.f noon,
descending from the steeple of Saint-Hilaire which it blazoned for a
moment with the twelve points of its sonorous crown, would long have
echoed about our table, beside the 'holy bread,' which too had come in,
after church, in its familiar way; and we would still be found seated in
front of our Arabian Nights plates, weighed down by the heat of the day,
and even more by our heavy meal. For upon the permanent foundation of
eggs, cutlets, potatoes, preserves, and biscuits, whose appearance on the
table she no longer announced to us, Francoise would add--as the labour of
fields and orchards, the harvest of the tides, the luck of the markets,
the kindness of neighbours, and her own genius might provide; and so
effectively that our bill of fare, like the quatrefoils that were carved
on the porches of cathedrals in the thirteenth century, reflected to some
extent the march of the seasons and the incidents of human life--a brill,
because the fish-woman had guaranteed its freshness; a turkey, because she
had seen a beauty in the market at Roussainville-le-Pin; cardoons with
marrow, because she had never done them for us in that way before; a roast
leg of mutton, because the fresh air made one hungry and there would be
plenty of time for it to 'settle down' in the seven hours before dinner;
spinach, by way of a change; apricots, because they were still hard to
get; gooseberries, because in another fortnight there would be none left;
raspberries, which M.
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