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By Root 1372 0

the dead. But I think that my mother found most comfort in the words in which I unintentionally betrayed a little of my own anguish. It could not but make Mamma happy (notwithstanding all her affection for myself), like everything else that guaranteed my grandmother survival in people’s hearts. Daily after this my mother went down and sat on the beach, in order to do exactly what her mother had done, and read her two favourite books, the Memoirs of Mme de Beausergent and the Letters of Mme de Sévigné. She, like all the rest of us, could not bear to hear the latter called the “witty Marquise” any more than to hear La Fontaine called “le Bonhomme.” But when, in reading the Letters, she came upon the words “my daughter,” she seemed to be listening to her mother’s voice.

She had the misfortune, on one of these pilgrimages during which she did not like to be disturbed, to meet on the beach a lady from Combray, accompanied by her daughters. Her name was, I think, Mme Poussin. But among ourselves we always referred to her as “Just You Wait,” for it was by the perpetual repetition of this phrase that she warned her daughters of the evils that they were laying up for themselves, saying for instance if one of them was rubbing her eyes: “Just you wait until you go and get ophthalmia.” She greeted my mother from afar with long, lachrymose bows, a sign not of condolence but of the nature of her social training. Had we not lost my grandmother and had we only had reasons to be happy, she would have done the same. Living in comparative retirement at Combray within the walls of her large garden, she could never find anything soft enough for her liking, and subjected words and even proper names to a softening process. She felt “spoon” to be too hard a word to apply to the piece of silverware which measured out her syrups, and said, in consequence, “spune”; she would have been afraid of offending the gentle bard of Télémaque by calling him bluntly Fénelon—as I myself did with every reason to know, having as my dearest friend the best, bravest, most intelligent of men, whom no one who knew him could forget: Bertrand de Fénelon—and invariably said “Fénélon,” feeling that the acute accent added a certain softness. The far from soft son-in-law of this Mme Poussin, whose name I have forgotten, having been notary public at Combray, ran off with the funds, and relieved my uncle, in particular, of a considerable sum of money. But most of the inhabitants of Combray were on such friendly terms with the rest of the family that no coolness ensued and people were merely sorry for Mme Poussin. She never entertained, but whenever people passed by her railings they would stop to admire the shade of her admirable trees, without being able to make out anything else. She hardly gave us any trouble at Balbec, where I encountered her only once, at a moment when she was saying to a daughter who was biting her nails: “Just you wait till you get a good whitlow.”

While Mamma sat reading on the beach I remained in my room by myself. I recalled the last weeks of my grandmother’s life, and everything connected with them, the outer door of the flat which had been propped open when I went out with her for the last time. In contrast with all this the rest of the world seemed scarcely real and my anguish poisoned everything in it. Finally my mother insisted on my going out. But at every step, some forgotten view of the casino, of the street along which, while waiting for her that first evening, I had walked as far as the Duguay-Trouin monument, prevented me, like a wind against which it is hopeless to struggle, from going further; I lowered my eyes in order not to see. And after I had recovered my strength a little I turned back towards the hotel, the hotel in which I knew that it was henceforth impossible that, however long I might wait, I should find my grandmother as I had found her there before, on the evening of our arrival. As it was the first time that I had gone out of doors, a number of servants whom I had not yet seen gazed at me curiously. On the very threshold