y this
acceleration of luncheon gave Saturday, for all of us, an individual
character, kindly and rather attractive. At the moment when, ordinarily,
there was still an hour to be lived through before meal-time sounded,
we would all know that in a few seconds we should see the endives
make their precocious appearance, followed by the special favour of an
omelette, an unmerited steak. The return of this asymmetrical Saturday
was one of those petty occurrences, intra-mural, localised, almost
civic, which, in uneventful lives and stable orders of society, create a
kind of national unity, and become the favourite theme for conversation,
for pleasantries, for anecdotes which can be embroidered as the narrator
pleases; it would have provided a nucleus, ready-made, for a legendary
cycle, if any of us had had the epic mind. At daybreak, before we were
dressed, without rhyme or reason, save for the pleasure of proving the
strength of our solidarity, we would call to one another good-humoredly,
cordially, patriotically, "Hurry up; there's no time to be lost; don't
forget, it's Saturday!" while my aunt, gossiping with Francoise, and
reflecting that the day would be even longer than usual, would say, "You
might cook them a nice bit of veal, seeing that it's Saturday." If, at
half-past ten, some one absent-mindedly pulled out a watch and said, "I
say, an hour-and-a-half still before luncheon," everyone else would
be in ecstasies over being able to retort at once: "Why, what are you
thinking about? Have you for-gotten that it's Saturday?" And a quarter
of an hour later we would still be laughing, and reminding ourselves to
go up and tell aunt Leonie about this absurd mistake, to amuse her. The
very face of the sky appeared to undergo a change. After luncheon the
sun, conscious that it was Saturday, would blaze an hour longer in the
zenith, and when some one, thinking that we were late in starting for
our walk, said, "What, only two o'clock!" feeling the heavy throb go by
him of the twin strokes from the steeple of Saint-Hilaire (which as
a rule passed no one at that hour upon the highways, deserted for the
midday meal or for the nap which follows it, or on the banks of the
bright and ever-flowing stream, which even the angler had abandoned, and
so slipped unaccompanied into the vacant sky, where only a few loitering
clouds remained to greet them) the whole family would respond in chorus:
"Why, you're forgetting; we had luncheon an hour