* * *
We used always to return from our walks in good time to pay aunt Leonie a
visit before dinner. In the first weeks of our Combray holidays, when the
days ended early, we would still be able to see, as we turned into the Rue
du Saint-Esprit, a reflection of the western sky from the windows of the
house and a band of purple at the foot of the Calvary, which was mirrored
further on in the pond; a fiery glow which, accompanied often by a cold
that burned and stung, would associate itself in my mind with the glow of
the fire over which, at that very moment, was roasting the chicken that
was to furnish me, in place of the poetic pleasure I had found in my walk,
with the sensual pleasures of good feeding, warmth and rest. But in
summer, when we came back to the house, the sun would not have set; and
while we were upstairs paying our visit to aunt Leonie its rays, sinking
until they touched and lay along her window-sill, would there be caught
and held by the large inner curtains and the bands which tied them back to
the wall, and split and scattered and filtered; and then, at last, would
fall upon and inlay with tiny flakes of gold the lemonwood of her
chest-of-drawers, illuminating the room in their passage with the same
delicate, slanting, shadowed beams that fall among the boles of forest
trees.
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