Swann's Way

our walk, said, "What, only two o'clock!" feeling the heavy throb go by
him of the twin strokes from the steeple of Saint-Hilaire (which as
a rule passed no one at that hour upon the highways, deserted for the
midday meal or for the nap which follows it, or on the banks of the
bright and ever-flowing stream, which even the angler had abandoned, and
so slipped unaccompanied into the vacant sky, where only a few loitering
clouds remained to greet them) the whole family would respond in chorus:
"Why, you're forgetting; we had luncheon an hour earlier; you know very
well it's Saturday."

The surprise of a 'barbarian' (for so we termed everyone who was not
acquainted with Saturday's special customs) who had called at eleven
o'clock to speak to my father, and had found us at table, was an event
which used to cause Françoise as much merriment as, perhaps, anything
that had ever happened in her life. And if she found it amusing that the
nonplussed visitor should not have known, beforehand, that we had our
luncheon an hour earlier on Saturday, it was still more irresistibly
funny that my father himself (fully as she sympathised, from the bottom
of her heart, with the rigid chauvinism which prompted him) should never