and a serpent's writhing back. Others again, no less colossal,
were disposed upon the steps of a monumental staircase which, by their
decorative presence and marmorean immobility, was made worthy to be
named, like that god-crowned ascent in the Palace of the Doges, the
'Staircase of the Giants,' and on which Swann now set foot, saddened by
the thought that Odette had never climbed it. Ah, with what joy would
he, on the other hand, have raced up the dark, evil-smelling, breakneck
flights to the little dressmaker's, in whose attic he would so gladly
have paid the price of a weekly stage-box at the Opera for the right to
spend the evening there when Odette came, and other days too, for the
privilege of talking about her, of living among people whom she was in
the habit of seeing when he was not there, and who, on that account,
seemed to keep secret among themselves some part of the life of his
mistress more real, more inaccessible and more mysterious than anything
that he knew. Whereas upon that pestilential, enviable staircase to
the old dressmaker's, since there was no other, no service stair in the
building, one saw in the evening outside every door an empty, unwashed
milk-can set out, in readiness for the morning round, upon the door-mat;
on the despicable, enormous staircase which Swann was at that moment
climbing, on either side of him, at different levels, before each
anfractuosity made in its walls by the window of the porter's lodge or
the entrance to a set of rooms, representing the departments of indoor
service which they controlled, and doing homage for them to the guests,
a gate-keeper, a major-domo, a steward (worthy men who spent the rest
of the week in semi-independence in their own domains, dined there by
themselves like small shopkeepers, and might to-morrow lapse to the
plebeian service of some successful doctor or industrial magnate),
scrupulous in carrying out to the letter all the instructions that had
been heaped upon them before they were allowed to don the brilliant
livery which they wore only at long intervals, and in which they did not
feel altogether at their ease, stood each in the arcade of his doorway,
their splendid pomp tempered by a democratic good-fellowship, like
saints in their niches, and a gigantic usher, dressed Swiss Guard
fashion, like the beadle in a church, struck the pavement with his staff
as each fresh arrival passed him. Coming to the top of the staircase, up
which he had been