THE GARDEN OF ILLIERSSwann, at this time in the evening; and for Marcel 'the drama of
going to bed' and the anxious ceremony of his good-night kiss
were enacted at Illiers as at Auteui!. Projecting from Ernestine's
back-kitchen into the garden was a single-storeyed building, with
windows of tinted glass, the cubby-hole of Uncle Jules and the
studio of his son Andre, who painted. Jules Amiot had lived in
Algeria as a young man, and his sanctum was adorned with
native mats on the stone floor, with carved coconuts and photo-
graphs of palm-trees and mosques. After lunch, when the others
took a siesta, and Dr Proust remarked, "It's strange, I don't feel
well if! don't have a nap in the daytime," Uncle Jules would say,
"I'd sooner walk ten miles than lie down now, it would give me
a fever," and retire to his room, where he was supposed to be
engaged in some important work. But when Marcel came to call
him for the afternoon walk he would not reply at first, and then
would answer in a startled voice, and come out rubbing his eyes;
for the sleep he maligned had overtaken him on his wickerwork
chaise-longue, by his hookah, as he arranged his photograph
album or meditated on his fabulous youth.
The garden door opened into the Place Lemoine, where the
Rue Saint-Hilaire, which continues the Rue de Chartres down to
the river and the Pont Saint-Hilaire, meets the Rue des Trois
Maries. It had a narrow grille through which one can still peep
into the stone-flagged garden, and over it hung the famous
jangling bell, which sounded automatically whenever one of the
family came in 'without ringing'. Its interminable clanging could
be heard in Mme Larcher's front room across the Place Lemoine,
and she would always say to her visitors: "There goes Jules
Amiot's doorbell"; it could never be mistaken for the 'double
tinkle, timid, oval and gilded' of the visitors' bel!. In his novel
Proust brought the Auteuil garden and with it Swann to Comhray,
but he kept the garden gate of Illiers and the two bells, which
took their place among the most potent symbols of Time Lost.
Past Aunt Amiot's front door ran the Rue du Saint-Esprit,
'monotonous and grey, with its three gritstone steps before nearly
every door, like a furrow cut by a sculptor of gothic images in
the very stone in which he has carved a crib or a calvary'. Next
door to the right lived M. Pipereau, who gave his name to Dr
Piperaud in Proust's novel; and next door to the left, on the street
corner, was Legue's grocery, which Ernestine patronised when