The weather was warm; it was the finest part
of the spring. And for all that he was driving through a city of stone to
immure himself in a house without grass or garden, what was incessantly
before his eyes was a park which he owned, near Combray, where, at four in
the afternoon, before coming to the asparagus-bed, thanks to the breeze
that was wafted across the fields from Meseglise, he could enjoy the
fragrant coolness of the air as well beneath an arbour of hornbeams in the
garden as by the bank of the pond, fringed with forget-me-not and iris;
and where, when he sat down to dinner, trained and twined by the
gardener's skilful hand, there ran all about his table currant-bush and
rose.
After dinner, if he had an early appointment in the Bois or at
Saint-Cloud, he would rise from table and leave the house so
abruptly--especially if it threatened to rain, and so to scatter the
'faithful' before their normal time--that on one occasion the Princesse
des Laumes (at whose house dinner had been so late that Swann had left
before the coffee came in, to join the Verdurins on the Island in the
Bois) observed:
"Really, if Swann were thirty years older, and had diabetes, there might
be some excuse for his running away like that.
Pages:
501
502
503
504
505
506
507
508
509
510
511
512
513
514
515
516
517
518
519
520
521
522
523
524
525