Swann's Way

one of the flat plates?" These were the only plates which had pictures
on them and my aunt used to amuse herself at every meal by reading the
description on whichever might have been sent up to her. She would
put on her spectacles and spell out: "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves,"
"Aladdin, or the Wonderful Lamp," and smile, and say "Very good indeed."

"I may as well go across to Camus..." Françoise would hazard, seeing
that my aunt had no longer any intention of sending her there.

"No, no; it's not worth while now; it's certain to be the Pupin girl. My
poor Françoise, I am sorry to have made you come upstairs for nothing."

But it was not for nothing, as my aunt well knew, that she had rung for
Françoise, since at Combray a person whom one 'didn't know at all' was
as incredible a being as any mythological deity, and it was apt to be
forgotten that after each occasion on which there had appeared in the
Rue du Saint-Esprit or in the Square one of these bewildering phenomena,
careful and exhaustive researches had invariably reduced the fabulous
monster to the proportions of a person whom one 'did know,' either
personally or in the abstract, in his or her civil status as being more