THE GARDEN OF ILLIERSwindow had three sets of impracticahle curtains, which it was
impossible to draw all at once. The whole room was full of objects
'which obviously hadn't been put there in the hope that they
would be of use to anyone'; but their very uselessness gave them
an individuality, a mysterious life of their own. On the wall hung
an engraving of Prince Eugene, looking handsome and fierce in
his military cloak. This picture Marcel innocently took to be
unique, and was amazed one day to find its twin hanging in a
railway refreshment-room, where it served to advertise a brand
of biscuits; his uncle, he realised, must have received it, one
among many, 'as a free gift from the munificent manufacturer'.
A photograph of Bottice\Ii's Primavera would have been much
more in accordance with William Morris's precepts for interior
decoration, as he afterwards confessed; 'but if I ever saw Prince
Eugene again, I think he would have more to tell me than the
Primavera'. The contents of his bedroom at IIIiers had a quality
more precious to him than beauty: they were raw material for his
imagination. In the 1890S he was to go through a period of 'good
taste'; afterwards, however, to the end of his life, he filled his
rooms with hideous but sacred objects which spoke to him of his
dead parents, his childhood, time lost. He had come into the
world not to collect beauty ready-made, but to create it.
Marcel would spend the morning in his uncle's garden on the
far side of the Loir or on walks with the family. When possible
he would return before twelve-o'clock lunch to read in the dining-
room by the fire, of which his uncle would soon be exclaiming:
"That's what I like to see! I can do with a bit of a fire-it was
pretty cold in the kitchen-garden at six o'clock this morning, I
can tell you! And to think that it's nearly Easter!" Meanwhile the
china plates on the wall refrained from interrupting the reading
child; the sound of the pump in the garden only made him look
up for a moment; but soon the servant came in to lay the tahle,
the walkers returned from Mereglise, the letter-writers came
downstairs. "Now then, put your book away, it's lunch-time,"
said Dr Proust, and they sat down to the delicious fowl which
Ernestine, with cries of "Filthy beast", had yesterday murdered
in the yard. Her cooking was exquisite, but Aunt Elisaheth's
judgment was even more so. Sometimes she would only nibble
at a dish, and then everyone knew that the verdict she refrained
from giving must be unfavourahle. The look of unshakeahle and