Swann's Way

had torn from my head, and my new hat with them. My mother was not at
all moved by my tears, but she could not suppress a cry at the sight of
my battered headgear and my ruined jacket. I did not, however, hear her.
"Oh, my poor little hawthorns," I was assuring them through my sobs, "it
is not you that want to make me unhappy, to force me to leave you.
You, you have never done me any harm. So I shall always love you." And,
drying my eyes, I promised them that, when I grew up, I would never copy
the foolish example of other men, but that even in Paris, on fine spring
days, instead of paying calls and listening to silly talk, I would make
excursions into the country to see the first hawthorn-trees in bloom.

Once in the fields we never left them again during the rest of our
Méséglise walk. They were perpetually crossed, as though by invisible
streams of traffic, by the wind, which was to me the tutelary genius of
Combray. Every year, on the day of our arrival, in order to feel that I
really was at Combray, I would climb the hill to find it running again
through my clothing, and setting me running in its wake. One always
had the wind for companion when one went the 'Méséglise way,' on