Swann's Way

raise his hat when we passed; and then I would always be just on the
point of asking his name, when some one would make a sign to me to be
quiet, or I would frighten the fish. We would follow the tow-path which
ran along the top of a steep bank, several feet above the stream. The
ground on the other side was lower, and stretched in a series of broad
meadows as far as the village and even to the distant railway-station.
Over these were strewn the remains, half-buried in the long grass, of
the castle of the old Counts of Combray, who, during the Middle Ages,
had had on this side the course of the Vivonne as a barrier and defence
against attack from the Lords of Guermantes and Abbots of Martinville.
Nothing was left now but a few stumps of towers, hummocks upon the broad
surface of the fields, hardly visible, broken battlements over which, in
their day, the bowmen had hurled down stones, the watchmen had gazed out
over Novepont, Clairefontaine, Martinville-le-Sec, Bailleau-l'Exempt,
fiefs all of them of Guermantes, a ring in which Combray was locked;
but fallen among the grass now, levelled with the ground, climbed and
commanded by boys from the Christian Brothers' school, who came there