y (when the public gardens of Combray
were constructed on its site) that the Boulevard de la Gare must
have taken refuge, for wherever I may be, as soon as they begin their
alternate challenge and acceptance, I can see it again with all its
lime-trees, and its pavement glistening beneath the moon.

Suddenly my father would bring us to a standstill and ask my
mother--"Where are we?" Utterly worn out by the walk but still proud of
her husband, she would lovingly confess that she had not the least
idea. He would shrug his shoulders and laugh. And then, as though it had
slipped, with his latchkey, from his waistcoat pocket, he would point
out to us, when it stood before our eyes, the back-gate of our own
garden, which had come hand-in-hand with the familiar corner of the Rue
du Saint-Esprit, to await us, to greet us at the end of our wanderings
over paths unknown. My mother would murmur admiringly "You really are
wonderful!" And from that instant I had not to take another step; the
ground moved forward under my feet in that garden where, for so long,
my actions had ceased to require any control, or even attention, from my
will. Custom came to take me in her arms, carried me all the way up to
my bed, and laid me down there like a little child.

Although Saturday, by beginning an hour earlier, and by depriving her
of the services of Francoise, passed more slowly than other days for my
aunt, yet, the moment it was past, and a new week begun, she would look
forward with impatience to its return, as something that embodied all
the novelty and distraction which her frail and disordered body was
still able to endure. This was not to say, however, that she did not
long, at times, for some even greater variation, that she did not
pass through those abnormal hours in which one thirsts for something
different from what one has, when those people who, through lack of
energy or imagination, are unable to generate any motive power in
themselves, cry out, as the clock strikes or the postman knocks, in
their eagerness for news (even if it be bad news), for some emotion
(even that of grief); when the heartstrings, which prosperity has
silenced, like a harp laid by, yearn to be plucked and sounded again
by some hand, even a brutal hand, even if it shall break them; when
the will, which has with such difficulty brought itself to subdue its
impulse, to renounce its right to abandon itself to its own uncontrolled
desires, and consequent suffer