ss, penetrating its odour of unbleached calico, to purchase a
handkerchief or something, of which the draper himself would let her see
what he had, bowing from the waist: who, having made everything ready
for shutting up, had just gone into the back shop to put on his Sunday
coat and to wash his hands, which it was his habit, every few minutes
and even on the saddest occasions, to rub one against the other with an
air of enterprise, cunning, and success.

And again, after mass, when we looked in to tell Theodore to bring a
larger loaf than usual because our cousins had taken advantage of the
fine weather to come over from Thiberzy for luncheon, we had in front of
us the steeple, which, baked and brown itself like a larger loaf still
of 'holy bread,' with flakes and sticky drops on it of sunlight, pricked
its sharp point into the blue sky. And in the evening, as I came in from
my walk and thought of the approaching moment when I must say good night
to my mother and see her no more, the steeple was by contrast so kindly,
there at the close of day, that I would imagine it as being laid, like a
brown velvet cushion, against--as being thrust into the pallid sky which
had yielded beneath its pressure, had sunk slightly so as to make room
for it, and had correspondingly risen on either side; while the cries of
the birds wheeling to and fro about it seemed to intensify its silence,
to elongate its spire still further, and to invest it with some quality
beyond the power of words.

Even when our errands lay in places behind the church, from which it
could not be seen, the view seemed always to have been composed with
reference to the steeple, which would stand up, now here, now there,
among the houses, and was perhaps even more affecting when it appeared
thus without the church. And, indeed, there are many others which
look best when seen in this way, and I can call to mind vignettes of
housetops with surmounting steeples in quite another category of art
than those formed by the dreary streets of Combray. I shall never
forget, in a quaint Norman town not far from Balbec, two charming
eighteenth-century houses, dear to me and venerable for many reasons,
between which, when one looks up at them from a fine garden which
descends in terraces to the river, the gothic spire of a church (itself
hidden by the houses) soars into the sky with the effect of crowning and
completing their fronts, but in a material so different, so precious, s