Marcel Proust: A Biography

THE GARDEN OF ILLIERS 27
hawthorns of the raidillon to the left, meadows could be seen
wbich were visible from nowhere else; and they seemed to Marcel
a mysterious country set in the middle of the real world, like the
underworld of water in which he had seen his mother b,thing. A
few yards further up the path, the park ended in a little plateau
containing an immemorial asparagus-bed, beside which grew the
strawberries of which his uncle was so proud. "They are
eX9uisite," Mme Proust would earnestly say; and "Yes, they are
good," Uncle Jules would reply modestly, "they are real wood-
strawberries." On the fur side of the asparagus-bed the end of the
garden was marked by a white gate, past which the landscape
dramatically changed into mile upon mile of rolling plain: here
was the Mereglise way.
There is no direct path to Mereglise here, however; the haw-
thorn path turns sharply right at the white gate, and runs down-
hill through land which then was green cornfields scattered with
scarlet poppies, and now is allotment-gardens, into the main road
from Illiers to Brou, here called Chemin de la Croix Rompue.
This leads back to the outskirts of Illiers, and crosses the opposite
end of the Rue des Vierges near the site of the church of Saint-
Hilaire, demolished in the French Revolution, which gave its
name to the church at Combray. Jules Amiot rescued carved stone
from its ruins for the front gate of his Pre Catelan in the Rue des
Vierges. Here a road to the left leads to Mereglise, and on the
right is the Loir with its only road-bridge, the Pont Saint-Hilaire,
over which it is delightful to lean and watch the trailing green
water-weeds and the motionless trout. Here the Rue Saint-
Hilaire leads from the bridge past the Place Lemoine and the Rue
du Saint-Esprit to the market-place.
Sometimes, when the family walked back from picnic-tea in the
Pre Catelan in the red twilight after sunset, Dr Proust would
take them a longer way round. From the town-side of the POnt
Saint-Hilaire another 'towing-path' leads up the Loir to a foot-
bridge called the Pont du Gue Bellerin. Here is the triangular
Place du Calvaire, with its cross and image of the Crucified,
which in Du CtJre de cher Swann becomes 'the Mall'. A road to
Saint-Eman runs north under the railway viaduct and past tile
cemetery, where at Comb ray Dr Percepied once met the music-
teacher Vinteuil; and the Rue de l'Oiseau-Flesche, named after
an inn where the mediaeval archers of Illiers met to shoot at a