THE GARDEN OF THE CHAMPS-EL YSEES 47returned. On rainy days he would stand by the window at home,
gazing in despair at the streaming balcony and the glistening
Boulevard Malesherbes; till a pale ray of sunlight shone on the
railings and cast a filigree shadow on the grey stone-work, which
gradually brightened, like a crescendo in music, to 'the fixed and
unalterable gold of a fine day'. He hurried to the Champs-
Elysees, and there was Marie already, greeting him with the
familiar "Let's start playing at once, you're on my side."
In December came the snow, levelling the boulevard with the
pavements and deadening the noise of the traffic. "There won't
be anyone at the Champs-Elysees," said Mme Proust, "and if
that's why you're looking at the sky, you can be sure Mile de
Benardaky won't come--they won't let her spoil her fine dresses
just for that." Suppressing a desire to strike his unfeeling mother,
Marcel replied: "No, I know she won't be there," and went, not
so much in order to see Marie, as to view the white ruin of his
hopes. The deserted lawns were deep in snow, and icicles hung
from the naked protuberances of the cherubs on the fountain;
but there, after all, was Marie advancing in front of her governess,
with glowing cheeks and a fur toque over her long black hair.
One by one their other friends arrived. Soon they were sliding
on the glazed gravel paths, and throwing snowballs; and as he
recalled with irony long afterwards, when Marie hurled down his
neck the snowballs which he himself had given her, he felt it was
a sign of predilection on her part, almost a declaration of their
love, and that all their company knew it.
Every evening before he went to sleep he would say to himself
"I shall see her to-morrow"; and ifhe woke in the small hours he
would fall asleep again with the thought: "It's already to-day!"
As he lay in bed he promised himself that to-morrow he would
make a decisive step in his love, or at least memorise the elusive
details of Marie's face; but when to-morrow came the afternoon
would pass in the insignificant ritual of prisoner's base, and her
face would have changed. 'He measured his pleasure in seeing
herby the immensity of his desire to see her,' he wrote afterwards
in Jean Santeuil, 'and by his grief at seeing her go; for he enjoyed
her actual presence very little.'l Sometimes in the Champs-
Elysees he felt that the little girl he saw was somehow a different
person from the little girl he loved: such are the characteristic
1 Jean Santeuil, vol. I, 89