vice
from her childhood, and had then taken a room beside the church, from
which she would incessantly emerge, either to attend some service,
or, when there was no service, to say a prayer by herself or to give
Theodore a hand; the rest of her time she spent in visiting sick persons
like my aunt Leonie, to whom she would relate everything that had
occurred at mass or vespers. She was not above adding occasional
pocket-money to the little income which was found for her by the family
of her old employers by going from time to time to look after the Cure's
linen, or that of some other person of note in the clerical world of
Combray. Above a mantle of black cloth she wore a little white coif that
seemed almost to attach her to some Order, and an infirmity of the
skin had stained part of her cheeks and her crooked nose the bright red
colour of balsam. Her visits were the one great distraction in the life
of my aunt Leonie, who now saw hardly anyone else, except the reverend
Cure. My aunt had by degrees erased every other visitor's name from
her list, because they all committed the fatal error, in her eyes,
of falling into one or other of the two categories of people she most
detested. One group, the worse of the two, and the one of which she rid
herself first, consisted of those who advised her not to take so much
care of herself, and preached (even if only negatively and with no
outward signs beyond an occasional disapproving silence or doubting
smile) the subversive doctrine that a sharp walk in the sun and a good
red beefsteak would do her more good (her, who had had two dreadful sips
of Vichy water on her stomach for fourteen hours!) than all her medicine
bottles and her bed. The other category was composed of people who
appeared to believe that she was more seriously ill than she thought,
in fact that she was as seriously ill as she said. And so none of those
whom she had allowed upstairs to her room, after considerable hesitation
and at Franchise's urgent request, and who in the course of their visit
had shewn how unworthy they were of the honour which had been done them
by venturing a timid: "Don't you think that if you were just to stir out
a little on really fine days...?" or who, on the other hand, when she
said to them: "I am very low, very low; nearing the end, dear friends!"
had replied: "Ah, yes, when one has no strength left! Still, you may
last a while yet"; each party alike might be certain that her doors
wou