en if the sky were clouded over, since the walk was
not very long, and did not take us too far from home), as though we were
not going anywhere in particular, by the front-door of my aunt's house,
which opened on to the Rue du Saint-Esprit. We would be greeted by
the gunsmith, we would drop our letters into the box, we would tell
Theodore, from Francoise, as we passed, that she had run out of oil
or coffee, and we would leave the town by the road which ran along the
white fence of M. Swann's park. Before reaching it we would be met on
our way by the scent of his lilac-trees, come out to welcome strangers.
Out of the fresh little green hearts of their foliage the lilacs raised
inquisitively over the fence of the park their plumes of white or purple
blossom, which glowed, even in the shade, with the sunlight in which
they had been bathed. Some of them, half-concealed by the little
tiled house, called the Archers' Lodge, in which Swann's keeper lived,
overtopped its gothic gable with their rosy minaret. The nymphs of
spring would have seemed coarse and vulgar in comparison with these
young houris, who retained, in this French garden, the pure and vivid
colouring of a Persian miniature. Despite my desire to throw my arms
about their pliant forms and to draw down towards me the starry locks
that crowned their fragrant heads, we would pass them by without
stopping, for my parents had ceased to visit Tansonville since Swann's
marriage, and, so as not to appear to be looking into his park, we
would, instead of taking the road which ran beside its boundary and then
climbed straight up to the open fields, choose another way, which led in
the same direction, but circuitously, and brought us out rather too far
from home.

One day my grandfather said to my 'father: "Don't you remember Swann's
telling us yesterday that his wife and daughter had gone off to Rheims
and that he was taking the opportunity of spending a day or two in
Paris? We might go along by the park, since the ladies are not at home;
that will make it a little shorter."

We stopped for a moment by the fence. Lilac-time was nearly over; some
of the trees still thrust aloft, in tall purple chandeliers, their tiny
balls of blossom, but in many places among their foliage where, only
a week before, they had still been breaking in waves of fragrant foam,
these were now spent and shrivelled and discoloured, a hollow scum, dry
and scentless. My grandfather pointed out to my