Her father would then arrange a
cloak over her shoulders, they would clamber into a little dog-cart which
she herself drove, and home they would both go to Montjouvain. As for
ourselves, the next day being Sunday, with no need to be up and stirring
before high mass, if it was a moonlight night and warm, then, instead of
taking us home at once, my father, in his thirst for personal distinction,
would lead us on a long walk round by the Calvary, which my mother's utter
incapacity for taking her bearings, or even for knowing which road she
might be on, made her regard as a triumph of his strategic genius.
Sometimes we would go as far as the viaduct, which began to stride on its
long legs of stone at the railway station, and to me typified all the
wretchedness of exile beyond the last outposts of civilisation, because
every year, as we came down from Paris, we would be warned to take special
care, when we got to Combray, not to miss the station, to be ready before
the train stopped, since it would start again in two minutes and proceed
across the viaduct, out of the lands of Christendom, of which Combray, to
me, represented the farthest limit.
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