Swann's Way

the intoxication of the storm, the force of hygiene, the stupidity of
my education and of symmetry in gardens, rather than by any anxiety (for
that was quite unknown to her) to save her plum-coloured skirt from the
spots of mud under which it would gradually disappear to a depth which
always provided her maid with a fresh problem and filled her with fresh
despair.

When these walks of my grandmother's took place after dinner there was
one thing which never failed to bring her back to the house: that was if
(at one of those points when the revolutions of her course brought her,
moth-like, in sight of the lamp in the little parlour where the liqueurs
were set out on the card-table) my great-aunt called out to her:
"Bathilde! Come in and stop your husband from drinking brandy!" For,
simply to tease her (she had brought so foreign a type of mind into my
father's family that everyone made a joke of it), my great-aunt used to
make my grandfather, who was forbidden liqueurs, take just a few drops.
My poor grandmother would come in and beg and implore her husband not to
taste the brandy; and he would become annoyed and swallow his few drops
all the same, and she would go out again sad and discouraged, but still