Swann's Way

from the day on which fine weather definitely set in at Combray--the
proud hour of noon, descending from the steeple of Saint-Hilaire which
it blazoned for a moment with the twelve points of its sonorous crown,
would long have echoed about our table, beside the 'holy bread,' which
too had come in, after church, in its familiar way; and we would still
be found seated in front of our Arabian Nights plates, weighed down
by the heat of the day, and even more by our heavy meal. For upon
the permanent foundation of eggs, cutlets, potatoes, preserves, and
biscuits, whose appearance on the table she no longer announced to us,
Françoise would add--as the labour of fields and orchards, the harvest
of the tides, the luck of the markets, the kindness of neighbours, and
her own genius might provide; and so effectively that our bill of fare,
like the quatrefoils that were carved on the porches of cathedrals
in the thirteenth century, reflected to some extent the march of the
seasons and the incidents of human life--a brill, because the fish-woman
had guaranteed its freshness; a turkey, because she had seen a beauty
in the market at Roussainville-le-Pin; cardoons with marrow, because she