ere was some talk, one year, of sending
me to spend the long summer holidays at Balbec with my grandmother,
he said: "I must, most certainly, tell Legrandin that you are going to
Balbec, to see whether he will offer you an introduction to his sister.
He probably doesn't remember telling us that she lived within a mile of
the place."

My grandmother, who held that, when one went to the seaside, one ought
to be on the beach from morning to night, to taste the salt breezes, and
that one should not know anyone in the place, because calls and parties
and excursions were so much time stolen from what belonged, by rights,
to the sea-air, begged him on no account to speak to Legrandin of our
plans; for already, in her mind's eye, she could see his sister, Mme. de
Cambremer, alighting from her carriage at the door of our hotel just
as we were on the point of going out fishing, and obliging us to remain
indoors all afternoon to entertain her. But Mamma laughed her fears to
scorn, for she herself felt that the danger was not so threatening, and
that Legrandin would shew no undue anxiety to make us acquainted with
his sister. And, as it happened, there was no need for any of us to
introduce the subject of Balbec, for it was Legrandin himself who,
without the least suspicion that we had ever had any intention of
visiting those parts, walked into the trap uninvited one evening, when
we met him strolling on the banks of the Vivonne.

"There are tints in the clouds this evening, violets and blues, which
are very beautiful, are they not, my friend?" he said to my father.
"Especially a blue which is far more floral than atmospheric, a
cineraria blue, which it is surprising to see in the sky. And that
little pink cloud there, has it not just the tint of some flower, a
carnation or hydrangea? Nowhere, perhaps, except on the shores of the
English Channel, where Normandy merges into Brittany, have I been able
to find such copious examples of what you might call a vegetable kingdom
in the clouds. Down there, close to Balbec, among all those places which
are still so uncivilised, there is a little bay, charmingly quiet, where
the sunsets of the Auge Valley, those red-and-gold sunsets (which,
all the same, I am very far from despising) seem commonplace and
insignificant; for in that moist and gentle atmosphere these heavenly
flower-beds will break into blossom, in a few moments, in the evenings,
incomparably lovely, and often lasting for hours