Swann's Way

whose splendid outline could be detected through the folds of her ample
smocks. These last recalled the cloaks in which Giotto shrouds some of
the allegorical figures in his paintings, of which M. Swann had given
me photographs. He it was who pointed out the resemblance, and when he
inquired after the kitchen-maid he would say: "Well, how goes it with
Giotto's Charity?" And indeed the poor girl, whose pregnancy had swelled
and stoutened every part of her, even to her face, and the vertical,
squared outlines of her cheeks, did distinctly suggest those virgins,
so strong and mannish as to seem matrons rather, in whom the Virtues are
personified in the Arena Chapel. And I can see now that those Virtues
and Vices of Padua resembled her in another respect as well. For just as
the figure of this girl had been enlarged by the additional symbol which
she carried in her body, without appearing to understand what it meant,
without any rendering in her facial expression of all its beauty and
spiritual significance, but carried as if it were an ordinary and rather
heavy burden, so it is without any apparent suspicion of what she is
about that the powerfully built housewife who is portrayed in the Arena