Swann's Way

about?" But my father, inquisitive, annoyed, and cruel, repeated: "Have
you friends, then, in that neighbourhood, that you know Balbec so well?"

In a final and desperate effort the smiling gaze of Legrandin struggled
to the extreme limits of its tenderness, vagueness, candour, and
distraction; then feeling, no doubt, that there was nothing left for it
now but to answer, he said to us: "I have friends all the world over,
wherever there are companies of trees, stricken but not defeated,
which have come together to offer a common supplication, with pathetic
obstinacy, to an inclement sky which has no mercy upon them."

"That is not quite what I meant," interrupted my father, obstinate as
a tree and merciless as the sky. "I asked you, in case anything should
happen to my mother-in-law and she wanted to feel that she was not all
alone down there, at the ends of the earth, whether you knew any of the
people."

"There as elsewhere, I know everyone and I know no one," replied
Legrandin, who was by no means ready yet to surrender; "places I know
well, people very slightly. But, down there, the places themselves seem
to me just like people, rare and wonderful people, of a delicate quality