Swann's Way

and in the following circumstances: Once or twice every month, in Paris,
I used to be sent to pay him a. visit, as he was finishing his luncheon,
wearing a plain alpaca coat, and waited upon by his servant in a
working-jacket of striped linen, purple and white. He would complain
that I had not been to see him for a long time; that he was being
neglected; he would offer me a marchpane or a tangerine, and we would
cross a room in which no one ever sat, whose fire was never lighted,
whose walls were picked out with gilded mouldings, its ceiling painted
blue in imitation of the sky, and its furniture upholstered in satin, as
at my grandparents', only yellow; then we would enter what he called his
'study,' a room whose walls were hung with prints which shewed, against
a dark background, a plump and rosy goddess driving a car, or standing
upon a globe, or wearing a star on her brow; pictures which were popular
under the Second Empire because there was thought to be something about
them that suggested Pompeii, which were then generally despised, and
which now people are beginning to collect again for one single and
consistent reason (despite any others which they may advance), namely,