In Search of Lost Time E-Book

Marcel Proust

• Herausgeber: Pushkin Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 265

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

Shortlisted for the Oxford-Weidenfeld prizeThis New York Times best-selling graphic adaptation of Proust's classic is an accessible yet still faithful rendering of Swann's Way.Proust's oceanic novel In Search of Lost Time looms over twentieth-century literature as one of the greatest, yet most endlessly challenging, literary experiences. Now, in what renowned translator Arthur Goldhammer says might be "likened to a piano reduction of an orchestral score," the French illustrator Stéphane Heuet re-presents Proust in graphic form for anyone who has always dreamed of reading him but was put off by the sheer magnitude of the undertaking.This graphic adaptation reveals the fundamental architecture of Proust's work while displaying a remarkable fidelity to his language as well as the novel's themes of time, art, and the elusiveness of memory.

Leseprobe

In Search of Lost Time

Swann’s Way

Marcel Proust

In

Search

of

Lost

Time

Swann’s Way

Adaptation and Drawings byTranslated by

PUSHKIN PRESS

A Gallic Book

First published in France as Du côté de chez Swann: Édition Intégrale

by Éditions Delcourt, 2013

Copyright © Éditions Delcourt, 2013

Adapted by Stéphane Heuet from À la recherche du temps perdu by Marcel Proust

First published in English in the USA by Liveright Publishing Corporation, a division of

W. W. Norton & Company Inc., in 2015

English translation copyright © Arthur Goldhammer, 2015

First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Gallic Books,

59 Ebury Street, London SW1W 0NZ

This book is copyright under the Berne Convention

No reproduction without permission

All rights reserved

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 9781805334620

Printed and bound in Singapore by Tien Wah Press

2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1

v

TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION

To adapt Swann’s Way, the first volume of Marcel Proust’s masterpiece In Search of Lost Time, as a graphic novel? As they say in French, c’est pas évident; it’s not obvious at first blush that such a feat can be pulled off. Proust is famous for his long, complicated sentences and his philosophical ruminations on the passage of time, the nature of art, and the elusiveness of memory. He is a painter in words, whose verbal artistry is bound to outshine any attempt at visual representation. Yet when I was approached to translate the text of Stéphane Heuet’s adaptation of Proust, I hesitated for only a moment. To a lover of Proust, the appeal was obvious.

But what about the reader? Who will want to read this book, and how should they approach it? In a review of the French version of Heuet’s adaptation, the critic Michael Wood imagined that the typical reader would be a person who had always dreamed of reading Proust but had been put off, perhaps, by the author’s daunting reputation for difficulty or by the sheer magnitude of the undertaking. I expect—I hope—that new readers will be drawn to my favourite writer by the promise of the gentle introduction this text offers. But gentleness is not the only virtue of Heuet’s adaptation. The ruthless compression required to squeeze Proust’s expansive sentences into the confining frames of a graphic novel yields an unexpected benefit: it sheds a revealing light on the book’s armature,

on the columns, pillars, and arches that support the narrator’s resurrected memories as the columns of the church in Combray support the stained glass and tapestries that transport visitors into the past they represent.

Proust’s regained time does not unfold in chronological order. Memory is cunning. It doesn’t disclose what it knows all at once. Even the involuntary memory by which Proust sets such great store refuses to unveil its truth straightaway. It tantalizes, as the view of an enticing landscape tantalizes the traveller discovering it for the first time: the beauty of the whole can be taken in at a glance, but the particular aspects that the whole encompasses must be explored patiently, sequentially, one by one, and then knitted together again into the composite whose alluring unity motivated the search to begin with. Proust likens the memory of the town of Combray, which the narrator often visited as a child but which has “died” for him until he dips the plump cake known as a madeleine into his tea, to one of those Japanese paper novelties that blossom when immersed in water: “And just as the Japanese amuse themselves by taking a porcelain bowl full of water and dipping in it small, seemingly shapeless bits of paper, which, the moment they touch the water, expand, assume new shapes, take on colour and variety, and turn into flowers, houses, or people, substan

vi

tial and recognizable, so, now, did all the flowers of our garden and of Swann’s estate and the water lilies of the Vivonne and the good people of the village and their little homes and the church and all of Combray and its surroundings take shape and solidity, a whole town and all its gardens emerging suddenly from my cup of tea.” But for us, Proust’s readers, Combray would remain a mere novelty, a Japanese water flower rather than an object of art, if Proust didn’t walk us through the memory of his aunt’s garden and Swann’s estate and the water lilies and the “good people” of the village step by step, taking us by the hand and introducing us one after another to the people and buildings and even the flora and fauna, the water lilies of the Vivonne and Mme Sazerat’s stray dog.

As we discover Combray through Marcel’s eyes, we find that his life there as a child is centred, as most children’s lives are, on his family, but we also find ourselves repeatedly taking surprising detours. In order to explain why he no longer enters a small sitting room formerly used by his uncle Adolphe, the narrator jumps backwards in time and several hundred miles in space, and we are introduced to Uncle Adolphe in the company of a beautiful denizen of the demi-monde, whose presence in his Paris apartment leads to a break between Adolphe and the rest of the family, thus accounting for his banishment from the house in Combray. Adolphe then reappears in the next section of the novel, “Swann in Love”, when he is enlisted as an intermediary between Swann and another disreputable beauty, Odette de Crécy, with whom Swann is obsessed and on whom, we learn, Uncle Adolphe has tried to force himself. We recall having previously met Odette back in Combray, though at that point she is introduced only as

a woman whose scandalous past and compromising relationship with the Baron de Charlus make it impossible for the narrator’s family to receive her as the wife of Charles Swann, their neighbour of many years. In Combray we merely glimpse Charlus, who reappears as a younger man in “Swann in Love”, where he is the one friend whom Swann thinks he can trust with his lover. We also catch our first glimpse of Gilberte, who will become the object of the narrator’s obsession in the third and final section of the novel, “Place Names: The Name”.

Similarly, we meet the Duchesse de Guermantes in “Combray”, only to find her again, years earlier, in “Swann in Love”. We might easily miss her reappearance, however, since in that section she is still the Princesse des Laumes. The composer Vinteuil, whose sonata will play such an important role in creating the bond, or bondage, that is the subject of “Swann in Love”, is first encountered in “Combray” as a censorious fellow parishioner of the narrator’s family who disapproves of the slovenly manners of the young and fusses over his mannish daughter.

Clearly, then, the reader new to Proust must attend closely, even in this compressed rendering, to the novel’s circling rhythms and abrupt cross-cuts between different places and times. But this necessary attentiveness is abetted and facilitated by the compactness of the graphic format. The patterned bass repeats at more frequent intervals here than in the original novel, so it is easier to keep the overarching structure of the great symphony in mind. Even the reader already familiar with the novel may make new discoveries thanks to the clarity of what might be likened to a piano reduction of an orchestral score. For what is sacrificed in

vii

variety of color and dynamic range, there is compensation in the prominence given to the major themes. And Heuet’s careful selection of certain extended passages of Proust’s rich prose ensures that enough of the colour and range and contrasting timbres of the principal instruments is retained to suggest the depth and breadth of the composer’s conception.

In using musical metaphors I am following Proust’s lead. The “little phrase” of Vinteuil’s sonata for violin and piano that is at the heart of Swann’s Way poses a challenge to the visual artist. What pictorial representation of the music can convey the power it has over Swann’s emotions? Music for Proust is art in its purest form. It works directly on the emotions. The narrator’s feelings about works of literature are shaped by what he has heard about them from people he admires: from his friend Bloch, from the engineer-aesthete Legrandin, from his elegant neighbour Charles Swann, from his teachers. Even his feelings for Gilberte and the Duchesse de Guermantes arise from names he has invested with significance before actually perceiving the people those names designate. But the little phrase from Vinteuil goes straight to Swann’s heart, unheralded by prior reputation or authoritative advocates. Its origin, Proust tells us, is “supernatural”, so in order to represent its effects on a natural being like Swann, the writer is forced to associate the playing of the music with certain coincidental events, whether Swann’s search for Odette on dark Paris boulevards late at night after the gaslights have been turned out—a search that Proust compares to Orpheus’s search for Eurydice among the shades of the underworld—or, evoking pathos (or bathos) of another order, the Comtesse de Monteriender’s comparison of the

music’s power to the mysteries of table-turning. The latter incident exemplifies another characteristic of Proust’s prose: its corrosive humour, its scathing satirical portrayals of a vast range of ludicrous and pitiable human types, from the witless would-be wit Dr. Cottard to that anti-Semitic snob, the Marquise de Gallardon, inconsolable because her younger cousin the Duchesse de Guermantes will not have her as a guest in her home despite the family tie that is at once the marquise’s greatest pride and greatest shame.

Translating this adaptation of Swann’s Way presents challenges similar to the challenge of adapting it in the first place. Speech that is reported in the text as free indirect discourse is here put in the mouths of the characters themselves and represented as speech by being enclosed, as in a comic strip, in “balloons”. Of course Proust also reports some of his characters’ speeches directly in the text, so not all the lines in the balloons are transformations of the author’s original words. Another change from the original is the truncation of some very long sentences, which, if they had been presented in their entirety, might call for a different translation, since rhythm is an important aspect of any prose style, and the rhythm of a sentence is necessarily affected by abbreviation. In other places sentences are telescoped to adapt to the visual representation of the text, or, conversely, lengthy passages are broken down into shorter phrases and distributed over many frames. Such passages might well be translated somewhat differently if set in their original context.

Nevertheless, the fidelity of the adaptation to Proust’s own language is remarkable. To be sure, there is a good deal less of that language

viii

than some Proustians might like. Readers who know Proust may find that some of their favourite passages have disappeared, that some of the finest images have had to be sacrificed, or that the pacing of the narrative is not as they remember it. Those discovering Proust for the first time should therefore bear in mind that this book is not Swann’s Way as Proust wrote it. But both Stéphane Heuet and I have tried to preserve the “flavour” of Proust—or, as they say in Combray, his “fragrance”—as un ménu de dégustation, or tasting menu, tries to give a full sampling of the dishes in the repertoire of a great chef. Those who find the taste to their liking will want to return often to savour fuller portions.

Finally, a word about existing English translations of Proust. I have looked at all of them but haven’t “followed” any of them, except insofar as any two translations of the same text will inevitably overlap here and there. Still, there is remarkable “entropy” in language, in the sense that the various elements of style—meaning, rhythm, register, diction, connotation, imagery, and so on—can be ordered in more than one way. Each possible arrangement of words on the page has its good qualities and its flaws. As the writer Marguerite Yourcenar once said, translation is like packing a bag: you can’t always get in everything you want or need to get in. Different translators will have different ideas about what is essential to bring along and what can safely (or silently) be left out.

I hope I’ve packed enough to make your journey comfortable and haven’t left out anything necessary to your enjoyment. In my own case,

my love of Proust, which first blossomed some forty-five years ago, was a major reason for wanting to perfect my French, and I have returned again and again to the places where my love first revealed itself, much as the narrator Marcel is obsessed with the places associated with the most powerful emotions he has experienced. Inevitably, “working on” Proust has proved to be a very different experience from simply enjoying him or even studying him or writing about him. I’ve had to contemplate not just the effect of his words but how they produce their effect and how the devices he uses might best be carried over into English. But following my path back and forth among the sentences of Swann’s Way is surely less interesting to the reader than following the narrator’s path back and forth among the hawthorns of Combray or between his home in Paris and the park in the Champs-Elysées where Gilberte gives him as a souvenir an agate marble the colour of her eyes. It is therefore time to end this introduction and invite you to proceed directly to the text and the art that Stéphane Heuet has created to accompany it.

[A glossary at the end of the text explains some references that may be unfamiliar to contemporary readers. There is also a map of Paris indicating some of the places that figure in the narrative.]

— Arthur Goldhammer

In Search of Lost Time

Swann’s Way

1

C

O

M

B

R

A

Y

or a long time

I went to bed early.

… and when I awoke in the middle of

the night, not knowing where I was, at

first I didn’t even know who I was;

… I would spend most of the night remembering our

former life in Combray at my great-aunt’s house, in Balbec,

in Paris, in Doncières, in Venice, and other places …

… but then memory (not yet of the place I was

in but of several places I had lived and might now

be) would come to me like help from on high and

rescue me from nothingness …

… my memory engaged …

F

2

n Combray, late in the

afternoon of every day,

long before it was

time to go to bed and lie

sleepless

far from my mother and

grandmother, my bedroom

became the focal point of my

painful preoccupations.

I

To distract me on nights when I seemed inconsolable,

someone thought of giving me a magic lantern.

“… so the scoundrel Golo ordered his

hired assassins to throw poor Geneviève

in the dungeon …”

We’re having beef stew

tonight.

Your mother told me to set

up the magic lantern to

pass the time until dinner.

Your great-aunt will

come up soon.

I’ve set up the Legend of

Geneviève de Brabant.

Very good,

Françoise.

“… for months, poor Geneviève

hid in the depths of the woods

with her child …”

“… afraid that the horrid Golo

would find her and kill her …”

“… moved by the sight of such misfortune, the

killers pretended to put her to death while

allowing her to flee into the forest …”

3

After dinner, alas, I was soon required

to leave Mama to chat with the others,

in the garden if the weather was nice or

in the small salon to which the company

retired if it wasn’t.

When she took these turns about the garden after

dinner, only one thing could compel her to come back in.

Alas! Little did I know

that what worried

my grandmother

on these

perambulations,

far more than her

husband’s dietary

indiscretions,

was my weak will,

delicate health, and

the consequent

uncertainty about

my future.

ding

To tease her, my great-aunt

would offer a few drops of

liqueur to my grandfather,

who was forbidden to

drink spirits.

Here, Amédée,

have some.

Everyone except my grandmother, who, no matter

what the weather, even if it was raining hard,

would go for a walk on the soggy paths.

Françoise,

please serve the

liqueurs in the

small salon.

ding

Dinner is

served!

It’s a pity to shut

oneself indoors in

the country. At last

I can breathe!

Bathilde! Come and stop

your husband from

drinking cognac!

Ah, it’s raining.

ding

4

My only consolation when I went up to my room

was the thought that, once I was in bed, Mama

would come and give me a kiss.

But that goodnight would be over so quickly … I began

to hope that it would be delayed as long as possible, to

prolong the time of respite during which Mama had

not yet appeared.

But the nights when

Mama stayed in my room

only briefly …

… were still sweet compared with those when

company came to dinner and she did not come

up to kiss me good night at all.

Usually the company was

limited to our neighbour

Monsieur Swann, who,

other than a few occasional

guests, was almost

the only person who came

to visit, sometimes for

dinner (though more rarely

after he made that bad

marriage, because my

parents did not wish to

receive his wife), sometimes

after dinner, on the spur of

the moment …

A visitor?

Who might

that be?

ding

ding

Stop whispering. Nothing is more unpleasant

for a visitor than to hear whispering.

5

M. Swann, though much younger, was very attached

to my grandfather, who had been one of his

father’s closest friends.

… my great-aunt and grandparents never

suspected that they were receiving one of the

most elegant members of the Jockey Club, …

If the conversation happened to turn to the princes

of the House of France:

… a close friend of the

Comte de Paris and the

Prince of Wales, …

… one of the most sought-after members of the

high society of the Faubourg Saint-Germain.

So my great-aunt took a haughty tone with him … handling

this elsewhere much sought-after guest with the naïve

clumsiness of a child who plays with a collector’s item as

carelessly as if it were a cheap toy.

Our social personalities are the creations of other people’s

minds. We invest the physical appearance of the person

we see with all the notions we have formed about him …

For many years, especially

before his marriage, during which

the younger M. Swann visited

us often in Combray, …

gliing

… people

you and

I will

never know,

I recognize

Swann’s voice.

and we can do

without them,

can’t we?

6

… or raise one to a higher caste.

The bourgeois of that

time had a rather

Hindu conception of

society, which they

saw as consisting of

closed castes in which

each person held the

same rank as his or her

parents, which nothing

could change …

Did you see that he’s

also mentioned in

Le Figaro?

One of the paintings

in his collection

is in the

Corot show!

Since he’s coming to

dinner tomorrow, we

can ask him about it.

Incredible! Swann is

a regular guest at the

luncheons of the

Duc de …

Amédée!

Please!

Amédée! Why does it give

you such pleasure to speak

of such foolishness?

How inappropriate!

A Swann at a duke’s

luncheons!

Poor Swann.

I don’t think he’ll be pleased.

I know I would find it very

unpleasant to see my name

printed like that in the

newspaper, and I wouldn’t

be at all flattered to be

asked about it.

Oh, no! That means that tomorrow

I’ll dine earlier than everyone else,

And Mama won’t

come up to kiss

me goodnight.

Foolishness? Pasquier?

A president of the

Chamber of Peers!

But you know, Swann

could ask him for me

why his uncle,

in his memoirs …

7

This is from M. Swann

for M. Amédée’s

sisters-in-law.

And the night of the dinner …

ding

ding

Remember to thank him for his wine in words he can make

sense of. It’s very good wine, and it was a huge case.

Don’t start whispering.

Think how uncomfortable it is

to come into a house where

everyone is speaking in whispers.

There are days when

I think that reading

the newspapers

is a very pleasant

pastime …

M. Vinteuil is not

the only person

with nice neighbours!

?

… yes, so I was reading

Saint-Simon’s memoirs

again this morning …

… it’s barely more

than a diary, but

admirably well-

written …

I ran into a very

nice neighbour of

M. Vinteuil’s.

… when they talk about

people or things we’re

interested in!

Yes … as Saint-Simon

says about Maulévrier:

“A thick bottle in which I

found nothing but irritability,

coarseness, and foolishness.”

Thick or not, I can think of

some bottles that have

something quite different

in them …

… and by the way, what

does Audiffret-Pasquier

have to say about that,

since it seems you dine

with him?

You know, what I’m about

to tell you has more to

do with what you’re

asking me than it might

seem. I was re-reading

Saint-Simon …

Please come and sit

with the rest of us!

!

8

Remind me of the line you taught me from which

I take so much solace in moments like this. Oh, yes:

“Lord, what virtues you make us despise!”

The boy looks tired. He should

go to bed. In any case, we’ll be

dining late tonight.

Yes, go up

to bed.

Dinner is served!

Come now, leave your

mother alone. You’ve said

good night quite enough.

Carrying on like that is

ridiculous. Go up to bed now!

Françoise, did you put the folding

bed in his room?

Yes, Madame, the cot

with the metal frame.

9

Alas …

I decided to try the

condemned man ploy

Françoise, can you give this note to Mama?

While the ladies and gentlemen

are still at the dinner table?

And I closed my

eyes, trying not to

hear my parents’

voices as they took

coffee in the garden.

And later …

Your mother asked

me to say that there

is no answer.

Surely Mama will come!

All right, I’ll see.

It’s not my fault if they’re still dining!

Mama is waiting for my answer,

and she’s very impatient!

Would you like an infusion?

Or shall I stay with you?

No, thank you, Françoise.

I’m going to bed.

Mama,

I beg you, come up

and see me. It’s very

important.

10

If my mother sees that I’ve stayed awake

just to say good night to her again, they’ll

send me away to boarding school tomorrow.

No matter! I preferred that. What I

wanted at that moment was Mama, to

say goodnight to her.

Since there are two beds in

his room, why don’t you spend the

night with him? Goodnight. Not

being afflicted with a

case of nerves myself, I think

I’ll go to bed now.

Get to bed! Get to

bed before your

father sees you.

Have you taken leave

of your senses?

Ah, he’s not

asleep.

He looks

distraught!

Suddenly …

Swann has

changed.

He seems older.

I believe he’s had a lot of trouble

with his wayward wife, who’s living

openly for all Combray to see

with a certain M. de Charlus.

Is that what you call saying thank you?

You can be certain he didn’t understand a word of it.

I give up. I’m going to bed.

So, my dear sisters-in-law,

you never thanked Swann

for the Asti …

What do you mean, not thanked him?

I think I even put it quite elegantly.

Yes, you managed

that very well, and

I was rather proud of

my turn of phrase about

the nice neighbours.

!

!

?

gliing

Finally!

M. Swann has

said goodbye.

Come, say

good night

to me!

Yes, the crayfish was good, but the

ice cream was nothing special.

No! No matter what, I will not

go to sleep until I’ve

seen Mama!

11

Mama stayed in my room that night. I should

have been happy, but I wasn’t.

So for a long time afterwards,

whenever I awoke during the night

and remembered Combray, I saw

only a glowing slab of

light amidst vague shadows.

As if Combray consisted

only of two floors linked

by a narrow staircase, and as

if the clock was stuck at seven.

Concerning Combray, I had no wish

to recall anything else or any other

time. To me it was in reality all dead.

Dead forever? Possibly.

It is wasted effort to try to remember the past.

Intellectual effort alone is futile. The past is hidden

beyond the ken of the intellect, in another realm,

in some unsuspected material thing.

And whether or not we encounter that thing

before we die depends on chance.

If I had just won a victory, it was over her.

That evening, which opened a new era, would remain

a dark date on the calendar.

12

any years went by during which nothing of Combray existed for me apart

from the drama of my bedtime, until …

Driver, this is the place, no. 45!

Yes, sir.

My dear child, you’re frozen!

Félicie! Make us some tea!

You know I never

take tea, Mama.

This will warm you up.

Come sit down.

M

13

Look! A madeleine?

Yes, Nicolas went

to the patisserie.

A delectable pleasure came over me, a

distinct sensation whose cause eluded me.

Where might that powerful

pleasure have come from?

I felt that, while it was linked to the taste

of the tea and the cake, it utterly

transcended them and must have been

of a different nature.

I was compelled to taste it

again ten times over …

What was pulsating within me had to

be the image, the visual memory linked

to that taste, which was seeking to

find a way into my consciousness.

Clearly, the truth I was after

was not in the taste but in me.

The taste awakened it …

?

Would this memory, this moment

of the past, rise to the surface

of my conscious mind?

“

.

.

.

good

Aunt

Léonie

.

.

.

”

morning,

time

for

mass

.

.

.

”

“

.

.

.

soon

will

be

it

14

And just as the Japanese amuse

themselves by taking a porcelain

bowl full of water and dipping in it

small, seemingly shapeless bits

of paper, which, the moment they

touch the water, expand, assume

new shapes, take on color and

variety, and turn into flowers,

houses, or people, substantial

and recognizable, so, now, did

The taste was that of the morsel of madeleine Aunt Léonie

gave me every Sunday morning in Combray after

dipping it in her tea or lime infusion.

And suddenly it came to me.

15

all the flowers of our garden

and of Swann’s estate and the

water lilies of the Vivonne and

the good people of the village

and their little homes and the

church and all of Combray and

its surroundings take shape and

solidity, a whole town and all its

gardens emerging suddenly from

my cup of tea.

16

T

o live in, Combray was a

rather sad place, as were its

streets: Rue Saint-Hilaire, Rue Saint-

Jacques, where my aunt had her house …

My great-aunt, whose home we lived in, was the mother of my Aunt Léonie, who,

since the death of her husband, my uncle Octave, had lost all desire to leave

first Combray and then her house and after that her room …

… and finally her bed, so that she no longer

“came down” but remained in bed in a vague state

of sorrow, physical debility, illness …

… obsessiveness, and devotion.

My aunt resigned herself to giving up a little of

Françoise’s company while we were there.

She had the street

before her eyes and,

to distract herself

like a Persian prince

from the tedium of life,

would read in it from

morning to night the

immemorial chronicle

of Combray, which she

would later discuss

with Françoise.

Mama, I’m going

up to kiss

Aunt Léonie

before mass.

You may go in now.

Madame Octave is ready for you.

Hmm! It wouldn’t

be surprising!

Toc

Toc

Here, have a

bite of madeleine.

Go now and get ready for mass, my poor child. And if you

see Françoise downstairs, tell her not to play with you

for too long and to come up soon in case I need anything.

It wouldn’t be surprising if they

came from the curé’s garden.

Ah, I’m sure you’re right,

Françoise, from the curé’s

garden! I swear those

asparagus were as thick as

a person’s arm. Not your

arm, to be sure, but my poor

arm, which has shrunk even

more this year.

Not at all, Mme Octave,

my time is not that dear.

He who made it didn’t sell

it for a profit.

Françoise, for whom were the funeral

bells tolling? Oh, good heavens,

it must have been for Mme Rousseau,

who passed away just the other night.

It’s time for the good Lord to take

me, my mind is gone. But I’m wasting

your time, my dear.

Françoise, Mme Imbert just went by with

some asparagus twice the size of those you

get from Mother Callot’s. Since you’ve been

serving us all sorts of asparagus dishes this

year, ask her maid …

Françoise, Mme Goupil was

so late for mass that I wouldn’t

be surprised if she arrived

after the Elevation.

17

Sometimes these

events took on

such a grave

and mysterious

character that

my aunt …

ding

But my aunt knew that it was not for nothing … Because in Combray, a person “one didn’t recognize”

was as incredible a sight as a mythical god would have been. One knew every creature in Combray,

animals as well as people, so well that if my aunt had by chance seen a dog “she didn’t recognize,”

she would have been unable to stop thinking about it …

But Mme Octave, it’s

not yet time for your

pepsin. Were you

feeling faint?

That would

be Madame

Sazerat’s

dog …

As if I wouldn’t

recognize

Madame

Sazerat’s dog!

Ah! It must

have been

Monsieur

Galopin’s dog.

Oh, that

must be it.

But you’ve plagued

us with asparagus

all year! Our Parisians

will have tired of it!

Not at all, Mme Octave, they

love asparagus. You’ll see

how they’ll gobble it all up when

they get back from church.

It must have been Monsieur Pupin’s daughter.

Why yes, of course!

But still, I wouldn’t have

recognized her!

But I’m not talking about the elder

child, Mme Octave, I mean the little one,

who was at boarding school in Jouy. I do

believe I saw her earlier this morning.

Oh, yes, of course. She’s

probably home for the Easter

holidays. That’s it!

Poor Françoise, I made you

come up for nothing.

Why no, Françoise … or I mean yes … Would

you believe that I just saw Mme Goupil with a

little girl I didn’t recognize …

Mme Octave, I must

be going, my oven is

not even lit, and I

still have to peel the

asparagus.

It’s apparently a very

friendly animal.

What’s that,

Françoise?

Asparagus again!

18