superficial responsiveness, that slavish affability, which may impress a stranger favourably, but often conceals an utter barrenness of spirit in which no amount of training can produce the least trace of individuality.
When Françoise, having seen that my parents had everything they required, first went upstairs again to give my aunt her pepsin and to find out from her what she would take for luncheon, very few mornings pased but she was called upon to give an opinion, or to furnish an explanation, in regard to some important event.
“Just fancy, Françoise, Mme. Goupil went by more than a quarter of an hour late to fetch her sister: if she loses any more time on the way I should not be at all surprised if she got in after the Elevation.”
“Well, there’d be nothing wonderful in that,” would be the answer. Or:
“Françoise, if you had come in five minutes ago, you would have seen Mme. Imbert go past with some asparagus twice the size of what mother Callot has: do try to find out from her cook where she got them. You know you’ve been putting asparagus in all your sauces this spring; you might be able to get some like these for our visitors.”
“I shouldn’t be surprised if they came from the Curé‘s,” Françoise would say, and:
“I’m sure you wouldn’t, my poor Françoise,” my aunt would reply, raising her shoulders. “From the Curé‘s, indeed! You know quite well that he can never grow anything but wretched little twigs of asparagus, not asparagus at all. I tell you these ones were as thick as my arm. Not your arm, of course, but my-poor arm, which has grown so much thinner again this year.” Or:
“Françoise, didn’t you hear that bell just now! It split my head.”
“No, Mme. Octave.”
“Ah, poor girl, your skull must be very thick; you may thank God for that. It was Maguelone come to fetch Dr. Piperaud. He came out with her at once and they went off along the Rue de l’Oiseau. There must be some child ill.”
“Oh dear, dear; the poor little creature!” would come with a sigh from Françoise, who could not hear of any calamity befalling a person unknown to her, even in some distant part of the world, without beginning to lament. Or:
“Françoise, for whom did they toll the passing-bell just now? Oh dear, of course, it would be for Mme. Rousseau. And to think that I had forgotten that she passed away the other night. Indeed, it is time the Lord called me home too; I don’t know what has become of my head since I lost my poor Octave. But I am wasting your time, my good girl.”
“Indeed no, Mme. Octave, my time is not so precious; whoever made our time didn’t sell it to us. I am just going to see that my fire hasn’t gone out.”
In this way Françoise and my aunt made a critical valuation between them, in the course of these morning sessions, of the earliest happenings of the day. But sometimes these happenings assumed so mysterious or so alarming an air that my aunt felt she could not wait until it was time for Françoise to come upstairs, and then a formidable and quadruple peal would resound through the house.
“But, Mme. Octave, it is not time for your pepsin,” Françoise would begin. “Are you feeling faint?”
“No, thank you, Françoise,” my aunt would reply, “that is to say, yes; for you know well that there is very seldom a time when I don’t feel faint; one day I shall pass away like Mme. Rousseau, before I know where I am; but that is not why I rang. Would you believe that I have just seen, as plainly as I see you, Mme. Goupil with a little girl I didn’t know at all. Run and get a pennyworth of salt from Camus. It’s not often that Théodore can’t tell you who a person is.”
“But that must be M. Pupin’s daughter,” Françoise would say, preferring to stick to an immediate explanation, since she had been perhaps twice already into Camus’s shop that morning.
“M. Pupin’s daughter! Oh, that’s a likely story, my poor Françoise. Do you think I should not have recognised M. Pupin’s daughter!”
“But I don’t mean the big one, Mme. Octave; I mean the little girl, the one who goes to school at Jouy. I seem to have seen her once already his morning.”
“Oh, if that’s what it is!” my aunt would say, “she must have come over for the holidays. Yes, that is it. No need to ask, she will have come over for the holidays. But then we shall soon see Mme. Sazerat come along and ring her sister’s door-bell, for her luncheon. That will be it! I saw the boy from Galopin’s go by with a tart. You will see that the tart was for Mme. Goupil.”
“Once Mme. Goupil has anyone in the house, Mme. Octave, you won’t be long in seeing all her folk going in to their luncheon there, for it’s not so early as it was,” would be the answer, for Françoise, who was anxious to retire downstairs to look after our own meal, was not sorry to leave my aunt with the prospect of such a distraction.
“Oh! not before midday!” my aunt would reply in a tone of resignation, darting an uneasy glance at the clock, but stealthily, so as not to let it be seen that she, who had renounced all earthly joys, yet found a keen satisfaction in learning that Mme. Goupil was expecting company to luncheon, though, alas, she must wait a little more than an hour still before enjoying the spectacle. “And it will come in the middle of my luncheon!” she would murmur to herself. Her luncheon was such a distraction in itself that she did not like any other to come at the same time. “At least, you will not forget to give me my creamed eggs on one of the flat plates?” These were the only plates which had pictures on them and my aunt used to amuse herself at every meal by reading the description on whichever might have been sent up to her. She would put on her spectacles and spell out: “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves,” “Aladdin, or the Wonderful Lamp,” and smile, and say “Very good indeed.”
“I may as well go across to Camus …” Françoise would hazard, seeing that my aunt had no longer any intention of sending her there.
“No, no; it’s not worth while now; it’s certain to be the Pupin girl. My poor Françoise, I am sorry to have made you come upstairs for nothing.”
But it was not for nothing, as my aunt well knew, that she had rung for Françoise, since at Combray a person whom one ‘didn’t know at all’ was as incredible a being as any mythological deity, and it was apt to be forgotten that after each occasion on which there had appeared in the Rue du Saint-Esprit or in the Square one of these bewildering phenomena, careful and exhaustive researches had invariably reduced the fabulous monster to the proportions of a person whom one ‘did know,’ either personally or in the abstract, in his or her civil status as being more or less closely related to some family in Combray. It would turn out to be Mme. Sauton’s son discharged from the army, or the Abbé Perdreau’s niece come home from her convent, or the Curé‘s brother, a tax-collector at Châteaudun, who had just retired on a pension or had come over to Combray for the holidays. On first noticing them you have been impressed by the thought that there might be in Combray people whom you ‘didn’t know at all,’ simply because, you had failed to recognise or identify them at once. And yet long beforehand Mme. Sauton and the Curé had given warning that they expected their ‘strangers.’ In the evening, when I came in and went upstairs to tell my aunt the incidents of our walk, if I was rash enough to say to her that we had passed, near the Pont-Vieux, a man whom my grandfather didn’t know:
“A man grandfather didn’t know at all!” she would exclaim. “That’s a likely story.” None the less, she would be a little disturbed by the news, she would wish to have the details correctly, and so my grandfather would be summoned. “Who can it have been that you passed near the Pont-Vieux, uncle? A man you didn’t know at all?”
“Why,
