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By Root 1633 0

me to invest with the trivial aspect of universal summer this coast of fog and tempest, to mark simply a pause, equivalent to what in music is known as a silent bar—now on the contrary it was bad weather that appeared to me to be some baleful accident, no longer worthy of a place in the world of beauty: I felt a keen desire to go out and recapture in reality what had so powerfully aroused my imagination, and I hoped that the weather would be propitious enough for me to see from the summit of the cliff the same blue shadows as in Elstir’s picture.

Nor, as I went along, did I still screen my eyes with my hands as in the days when, conceiving nature to be animated by a life anterior to the first appearance of man and in opposition to all those wearisome improvements of industrial civilisation which had hitherto made me yawn with boredom at universal exhibitions or milliners’ windows, I endeavoured to see only that section of the sea over which there was no steamer passing, so that I might picture it to myself as immemorial, still contemporary with the ages when it had been divorced from the land, or at least contemporary with the early centuries of Greece, which enabled me to repeat in their literal meaning the lines of “old man Leconte” of which Bloch was so fond:

Gone are the kings, their ships pierced by rams,

Vanished upon the raging deep, alas,

The long-haired warriors of heroic Hellas.

I could no longer despise the milliners, now that Elstir had told me that the delicate gesture with which they give a last refinement, a supreme caress to the bows or feathers of a hat after it is finished, would be as interesting to him to paint as that of the jockeys (a statement which had delighted Albertine). But I must wait until I had returned—for milliners, to Paris, for regattas and races to Balbec, where there would be no more now until next year. Even a yacht with women in white linen was not to be found.

Often we encountered Bloch’s sisters, to whom I was obliged to bow since I had dined with their father. My new friends did not know them. “I’m not allowed to play with Israelites,” Albertine announced. Her way of pronouncing the word—“Issraelites” instead of “Izraelites”—would in itself have sufficed to show, even if one had not heard the rest of the sentence, that it was no feeling of friendliness towards the chosen race that inspired these young bourgeoises, brought up in God-fearing homes, and quite ready to believe that the Jews were in the habit of butchering Christian children. “Besides, they’re shocking bad form, your friends,” said Andrée with a smile which implied that she knew very well that they were no friends of mine. “Like everything to do with the tribe,” added Albertine, in the sententious tone of one who spoke from personal experience. To tell the truth, Bloch’s sisters, at once overdressed and half naked, with their languid, brazen, ostentatious, slatternly air, did not create the best impression. And one of their cousins, who was only fifteen, scandalised the Casino by her unconcealed admiration for Mlle Léa, whose talent as an actress M. Bloch senior rated very high, but whose tastes were understood not to be primarily directed towards gentlemen.

There were days when we picnicked at one of the outlying farms which catered for visitors. These were the farms known as Les Ecorres, Marie-Thérèse, La Croix d’Heuland, Bagatelle, Californie and Marie-Antoinette. It was the last that had been adopted by the little band.

But at other times, instead of going to a farm, we would climb to the highest point of the cliff, and, when we had reached it and were seated on the grass, would undo our parcel of sandwiches and cakes. My friends preferred the sandwiches, and were surprised to see me eat only a single chocolate cake, sugared with Gothic tracery, or an apricot tart. This was because, with the sandwiches of cheese or salad, a form of food that was novel to me and was ignorant of the past, I had nothing in common. But the cakes understood, the tarts were talkative. There was in the former an insipid taste