hat
she might go upstairs to 'occupy' my aunt. But--and this more than ever
from the day on which fine weather definitely set in at Combray--the
proud hour deg.f noon, descending from the steeple of Saint-Hilaire which
it blazoned for a moment with the twelve points of its sonorous crown,
would long have echoed about our table, beside the 'holy bread,' which
too had come in, after church, in its familiar way; and we would still
be found seated in front of our Arabian Nights plates, weighed down
by the heat of the day, and even more by our heavy meal. For upon
the permanent foundation of eggs, cutlets, potatoes, preserves, and
biscuits, whose appearance on the table she no longer announced to us,
Francoise would add--as the labour of fields and orchards, the harvest
of the tides, the luck of the markets, the kindness of neighbours, and
her own genius might provide; and so effectively that our bill of fare,
like the quatrefoils that were carved on the porches of cathedrals
in the thirteenth century, reflected to some extent the march of the
seasons and the incidents of human life--a brill, because the fish-woman
had guaranteed its freshness; a turkey, because she had seen a beauty
in the market at Roussainville-le-Pin; cardoons with marrow, because she
had never done them for us in that way before; a roast leg of mutton,
because the fresh air made one hungry and there would be plenty of time
for it to 'settle down' in the seven hours before dinner; spinach,
by way of a change; apricots, because they were still hard to get;
gooseberries, because in another fortnight there would be none left;
raspberries, which M. Swann had brought specially; cherries, the first
to come from the cherry-tree, which had yielded none for the last two
years; a cream cheese, of which in those days I was extremely fond; an
almond cake, because she had ordered one the evening before; a fancy
loaf, because it was our turn to 'offer' the holy bread. And when all
these had been eaten, a work composed expressly for ourselves, but
dedicated more particularly to my father, who had a fondness for such
things, a cream of chocolate, inspired in the mind, created by the
hand of Francoise, would be laid before us, light and fleeting as an
'occasional piece' of music, into which she had poured the whole of her
talent. Anyone who refused to partake of it, saying: "No, thank you, I
have finished; I am not hungry," would at once have been lowered to the
level of