"Françoise, for whom did they toll the passing-bell just now? Oh dear, of course, it would be for Mme. Rousseau. And to think that I had forgotten that she passed away the other night. Indeed, it is time the Lord called me home too; I don't know what has become of my head since I lost my poor Octave. But I am wasting your time, my good girl."
"Indeed no, Mme. Octave, my time is not so precious; whoever made our time didn't sell it to us. I am just going to see that my fire hasn't gone out."
In this way Françoise and my aunt made a critical valuation between them, in the course of these morning sessions, of the earliest happenings of the day. But sometimes these happenings assumed so mysterious or so alarming an air that my aunt felt she could not wait until it was time for Françoise to come upstairs, and then a formidable and quadruple peal would resound through the house.
"But, Mme. Octave, it is not time for your pepsin," Françoise would begin. "Are you feeling faint?"
"No, thank you, Françoise," my aunt would reply, "that is to say, yes; for you know well that there is very seldom a time when I don't feel faint; one day I shall pass away like Mme. Rousseau, before I know where I am; but that is not why I rang. Would you believe that I have just seen, as plainly as I see you, Mme. Goupil with a little girl I didn't know at all. Run and get a pennyworth of salt from Camus. It's not often that Théodore can't tell you who a person is."
"But that must be M. Pupin's daughter," Françoise would say, preferring to stick to an immediate explanation, since she had been perhaps twice already into Camus's shop that morning.
"M. Pupin's daughter! Oh, that's a likely story, my poor Françoise. Do you think I should not have recognised M. Pupin's daughter!"
"But I don't mean the big one, Mme. Octave; I mean the little girl, he one who goes to school at Jouy. I seem to have seen her once already his morning."
"Oh, if that's what it is!" my aunt would say, "she must have come over for the holidays. Yes, that is it. No need to ask, she will have come over for the holidays. But then we shall soon see Mme. Sazerat come along and ring her sister's door-bell, for her luncheon. That will be it! I saw the boy from Galopin's go by with a tart. You will see that the tart was for Mme. Goupil."
"Once Mme. Goupil has anyone in the house, Mme. Octave, you won't be long in seeing all her folk going in to their luncheon there, for it's not so early as it was," would be the answer, for Françoise, who was anxious to retire downstairs to look after our own meal, was not sorry to leave my aunt with the prospect of such a distraction.
"Oh! not before midday!" my aunt would reply in a tone of resignation, darting an uneasy glance at the clock, but stealthily, so as not to let it be seen that she, who had renounced all earthly joys, yet found a keen satisfaction in learning that Mme. Goupil was expecting company to luncheon, though, alas, she must wait a little more than an hour still before enjoying the spectacle. "And it will come in the middle of my luncheon!" she would murmur to herself. Her luncheon was such a distraction in itself that she did not like any other to come at the same time. "At least, you will not forget to give me my creamed eggs on one of the flat plates?" These were the only plates which had pictures on them and my aunt used to amuse herself at every meal by reading the description on whichever might have been sent up to her. She would put on her spectacles and spell out: "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves," "Aladdin, or the Wonderful Lamp," and smile, and say "Very good indeed."
"I may as well go across to Camus … " Françoise would hazard, seeing that my aunt had no longer any intention of sending her there.
"No, no; it's not worth while now; it's certain to be the Pupin girl. My poor Françoise, I am sorry to have made you come upstairs for nothing."
But it was not for nothing, as my aunt well knew, that she had rung for Françoise, since at Combray a person whom one 'didn't know at all' was as incredible a being as any mythological deity, and it was apt to be forgotten that after each occasion on which there had appeared in the Rue du Saint-Esprit or in the Square one of these bewildering phenomena, careful and exhaustive researches had invariably reduced the fabulous monster to the proportions of a person whom one 'did know,' either personally or in the abstract, in his or her civil status as being more or less closely related to some family in Combray. It would turn out to be Mme. Sauton's son discharged from the army, or the Abbé Perdreau's niece come home from her convent, or the Curé's brother, a tax-collector at Châteaudun, who had just retired on a pension or had come over to Combray for the holidays. On first noticing them you have been impressed by the thought that there might be in Combray people whom you 'didn't know at all,' simply because, you had failed to recognise or identify them at once. And yet long beforehand Mme. Sauton and the Curé had given warning that they expected their 'strangers.' In the evening, when I came in and went upstairs to tell my aunt the incidents of our walk, if I was rash enough to say to her that we had passed, near the Pont-Vieux, a man whom my grandfather didn't know:
"A man grandfather didn't know at all!" she would exclaim. "That's a likely story." None the less, she would be a little disturbed by the news, she would wish to have the details correctly, 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," Françoise 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," Françoise would go on, having got the story from Théodore, "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, Françoise, 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 Françoise 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 the cloaks of peasant-women going into the church, and of their fingers dipping into the water, had managed by agelong repetition to acquire a destructive force, to impress itself on the stone, to carve ruts in it like those made by cart-wheels upon stone gate-posts against which they are driven every day. Its memorial stones, beneath which the noble dust of the Abbots of Combray, who were buried there, furnished the choir with a sort of spiritual pavement, were themselves no longer hard and lifeless matter, for time