In Search of Lost Time, Volume I_ Swann's Way - Marcel Proust [71]
The prosperity of the wicked
Drains away like a torrent.
But when the Curé had come as well, and by his interminable visit had drained my aunt’s strength, Françoise would follow Eulalie from the room, saying: “Mme Octave, I will leave you to rest; you look really tired out.”
And my aunt would answer her not a word, breathing a sigh so faint that it seemed it must prove her last, and lying there with closed eyes, as though already dead. But hardly had Françoise arrived downstairs when four peals of a bell pulled with the utmost violence reverberated through the house, and my aunt, sitting bolt upright in her bed, would call out: “Has Eulalie gone yet? Would you believe it; I forgot to ask her whether Mme Goupil arrived in church before the Elevation. Run after her, quick!”
But Françoise would return alone, having failed to overtake Eulalie.
“It is most provoking,” my aunt would say, shaking her head. “The one important thing that I had to ask her.”
In this way life went by for my aunt Léonie, always the same, in the gentle uniformity of what she called, with a pretence of deprecation but with a deep tenderness, her “little jog-trot.” Respected by all and sundry, not merely in her own house, where every one of us, having learned the futility of recommending a healthier mode of life, had become gradually resigned to its observance, but in the village as well, where, three streets away, a tradesman who had to hammer nails into a packing-case would send first to Françoise to make sure that my aunt was not “resting.” This “jog-trot” was none the less brutally disturbed on one occasion that year. Like a fruit hidden among its leaves, which has grown and ripened unobserved and falls of its own accord, there came upon us one night the kitchen-maid’s confinement. Her pains were unbearable, and, as there was no midwife in Combray, Françoise had to set off before dawn to fetch one from Thiberzy. My aunt was unable to rest owing to the cries of the girl, and as Françoise, though the distance was not great, was very late in returning, her services were greatly missed. And so, in the course of the morning, my mother said to me: “Run upstairs and see if your aunt wants anything.”
I went into the first of her two rooms, and through the open door of the other saw my aunt lying on her side asleep; I could hear her snoring gently. I was about to slip away when the noise of my entry must have broken into her sleep and made it “change gear,” as they say of motor-cars, for the music of her snore stopped for a second and began again on a lower note; then she awoke and half turned her face, which I could see for the first time; a kind of horror was imprinted on it; plainly she had just escaped from some terrifying dream. She could not see me from the position in which she was lying, and I stood there not knowing whether I ought to go forward or withdraw; but all at once she seemed to return to a sense of reality, and to grasp the falsehood of the visions that had terrified her; a smile of joy, of pious thanksgiving to God who is pleased to grant that life shall be less cruel than our dreams, feebly illumined her face, and, with the habit she had formed of speaking to herself half-aloud when she thought herself alone, she murmured: “God be praised! we have nothing to worry us here but the kitchen-maid’s baby. And I’ve been dreaming that my poor Octave