ntial than the
projections of my magic-lantern; while at times I feel that to be able
to cross the Rue Saint-Hilaire again, to engage a room in the Rue de
l'Oiseau, in the old hostelry of the Oiseau Flesche, from whose windows
in the pavement used to rise a smell of cooking which rises still in
my mind, now and then, in the same warm gusts of comfort, would be to
secure a contact with the unseen world more marvellously supernatural
than it would be to make Golo's acquaintance and to chat with Genevieve
de Brabant.

My grandfather's cousin--by courtesy my great-aunt--with whom we used
to stay, was the mother of that aunt Leonie who, since her husband's (my
uncle Octave's) death, had gradually declined to leave, first Combray,
then her house in Combray, then her bedroom, and finally her bed;
and who now never 'came down,' but lay perpetually in an indefinite
condition of grief, physical exhaustion, illness, obsessions,
and religious observances. Her own room looked out over the Rue
Saint-Jacques, which ran a long way further to end in the Grand-Pre (as
distinct from the Petit-Pre, a green space in the centre of the town
where three streets met) and which, monotonous and grey, with the three
high steps of stone before almost every one of its doors, seemed like a
deep furrow cut by some sculptor of gothic images in the very block of
stone out of which he had fashioned a Calvary or a Crib. My aunt's life
was now practically confined to two adjoining rooms, in one of which she
would rest in the afternoon while they, aired the other. They were rooms
of that country order which (just as in certain climes whole tracts of
air or ocean are illuminated or scented by myriads of protozoa which
we cannot see) fascinate our sense of smell with the countless odours
springing from their own special virtues, wisdom, habits, a whole secret
system of life, invisible, superabundant and profoundly moral, which
their atmosphere holds in solution; smells natural enough indeed, and
coloured by circumstances as are those of the neighbouring countryside,
but already humanised, domesticated, confined, an exquisite, skilful,
limpid jelly, blending all the fruits of the season which have left
the orchard for the store-room, smells changing with the year, but
plenishing, domestic smells, which compensate for the sharpness of hoar
frost with the sweet savour of warm bread, smells lazy and punctual as
a village clock, roving smells, pious smells; rejoic