ds us, and flashing in the
sunlight. The gardener wanted to know whether there were still many to
come, and he was thirsty besides, with the sun beating down upon his
head. So then, suddenly, his daughter would leap out, as though from
a beleaguered city, would make a sortie, turn the street corner, and,
having risked her life a hundred times over, reappear and bring us,
with a jug of liquorice-water, the news that there were still at least
a thousand of them, pouring along without a break from the direction
of Thiberzy and Meseglise. Francoise and the gardener, having 'made up'
their difference, would discuss the line to be followed in case of war.

"Don't you see, Francoise," he would say. "Revolution would be better,
because then no one would need to join in unless he liked."

"Oh, yes, I can see that, certainly; it's more straightforward."

The gardener believed that, as soon as war was declared, they would stop
all the railways.

"Yes, to be sure; so that we sha'n't get away," said Francoise.

And the gardener would assent, with "Ay, they're the cunning ones," for
he would not allow that war was anything but a kind of trick which the
state attempted to play on the people, or that there was a man in the
world who would not run away from it if he had the chance to do so.

But Francoise would hasten back to my aunt, and I would return to my
book, and the servants would take their places again outside the gate to
watch the dust settle on the pavement, and the excitement caused by the
passage of the soldiers subside. Long after order had been restored,
an abnormal tide of humanity would continue to darken the streets of
Corn-bray. And in front of every house, even of those where it was not,
as a rule, 'done,' the servants, and sometimes even the masters would
sit and stare, festooning their doorsteps with a dark, irregular fringe,
like the border of shells and sea-weed which a stronger tide than usual
leaves on the beach, as though trimming it with embroidered crape, when
the sea itself has retreated.

Except on such days as these, however, I would as a rule be left to read
in peace. But the interruption which a visit from Swann once made, and
the commentary which he then supplied to the course of my reading,
which had brought me to the work of an author quite new to me, called
Bergotte, had this definite result that for a long time afterwards
it was not against a wall gay with spikes of purple blossom, but on a