, and so my
grandfather would be summoned. "Who can it have been that you passed
near the Pont-Vieux, uncle? A man you didn't know at all?"

"Why, of course I did," my grandfather would answer; "it was Prosper,
Mme. Bouilleboeuf's gardener's brother."

"Ah, well!" my aunt would say, calm again but slightly flushed still;
"and the boy told me that you had passed a man you didn't know at all!"
After which I would be warned to be more careful of what I said, and not
to upset my aunt so by thoughtless remarks. Everyone was so well known
in Combray, animals as well as people, that if my aunt had happened to
see a dog go by which she 'didn't know at all' she would think about it
incessantly, devoting to the solution of the incomprehensible problem
all her inductive talent and her leisure hours.

"That will be Mme. Sazerat's dog," Francoise would suggest, without any
real conviction, but in the hope of peace, and so that my aunt should
not 'split her head.'

"As if I didn't know Mme. Sazerat's dog!"--for my aunt's critical mind
would not so easily admit any fresh fact.

"Ah, but that will be the new dog M. Galopin has brought her from
Lisieux."

"Oh, if that's what it is!"

"It seems, it's a most engaging animal," Francoise would go on, having
got the story from Theodore, "as clever as a Christian, always in a good
temper, always friendly, always everything that's nice. It's not often
you see an animal so well-behaved at that age. Mme. Octave, it's high
time I left you; I can't afford to stay here amusing myself; look, it's
nearly ten o'clock and my fire not lighted yet, and I've still to dress
the asparagus."

"What, Francoise, more asparagus! It's a regular disease of asparagus
you have got this year: you will make our Parisians sick of it."

"No, no, Madame Octave, they like it well enough. They'll be coming back
from church soon as hungry as hunters, and they won't eat it out of the
back of their spoons, you'll see."

"Church! why, they must be there now; you'd better not lose any time. Go
and look after your luncheon."

While my aunt gossiped on in this way with Francoise I would have
accompanied my parents to mass. How I loved it: how clearly I can see it
still, our church at Combray! The old porch by which we went in, black,
and full of holes as a cullender, was worn out of shape and deeply
furrowed at the sides (as also was the holy water stoup to which it led
us) just as if the gentle grazing touch of th