Swann's Way

for you then."

I was only too delighted, and Mamma went to find a parcel of books
in which I could not distinguish, through the paper in which it was
wrapped, any more than its squareness and size, but which, even at this
first glimpse, brief and obscure as it was, bade fair to eclipse already
the paint-box of last New Year's Day and the silkworms of the year
before. It contained _La Mare au Diable_, _François le Champi_, _La
Petite Fadette_, and _Les Maîtres Sonneurs_. My grandmother, as I
learned afterwards, had at first chosen Mussel's poems, a volume of
Rousseau, and _Indiana_; for while she considered light reading as
unwholesome as sweets and cakes, she did not reflect that the strong
breath of genius must have upon the very soul of a child an influence
at once more dangerous and less quickening than those of fresh air and
country breezes upon his body. But when my father had seemed almost to
regard her as insane on learning the names of the books she proposed
to give me, she had journeyed back by herself to Jouy-le-Vicomte to
the bookseller's, so that there should be no fear of my not having my
present in time (it was a burning hot day, and she had come home so