MARCEL PROUST
be able to finish. But for the past fortnight he has been busy 'on
a little work, quite different from the sort of thing I usually write,
on Ruslcin and certain cathedrals.' Meanwhile, a few days before,
Mile Nordlinger's cousin Reynaldo Habn had written to her what
might seem a contradictory report, that Marcel was 'translating
the fourth chapter of Ruslcin's book on Amiens.' Ought we to
deduce that he had already completed the first three chapters?
Probably not, for this fourth chapter, to which the preceding
three are merely introductory, gives a full guide to the cathedral
and is complete in itself. As we have seen, Mile Nordlinger, after
her visit to Amiens eighteen months before, had made him an
improvised translation from the 'Separate Travellers' Edition' of
this very chapter; he had already begun, partly in emulation of La
Sizeranne,l a series of pilgrimages to the cathedrals described by
Ruslcin, of which Amiens was the most accessible for a day-
tripper from Paris; so on every account it was natural that he
should turn first to this, of all sections of Ruslcin's works. His first
visit to Amiens had already taken place, in late October or early
November, 'in the chill golden air of a French autumn morning' ,2
with this same Chapter Four of The Bible of Amiens as guide.
Ruskin suggested two possible ways of approaching the
cathedral: the first, 'if you are not afraid of an hour's walk', from
the citadel on the chalk hill beyond the northernmost of the eleven
streams into which the Somme here divides, causing Ruslcin to
call Amiens 'the Venice of France'; the second, 'if you cannot or
will not walk, or if you really must go to Paris this afternoon, and
supposing notwithstanding these weaknesses you are still a nice
sort of person, for whom it is of some consequence which way
you come at a pretty thing', from the Place Gambetta up the
busiest street of the town, the Rue des Trois Cailloux. Proust,
deciding that he belonged to this latter class, followed the pre-
scribed way: past the patisserie on the left, where he followed
Ruslcin's advice to 'buy some bonbons or tarts, so as to get into
a cheerful temper', and up the Rue Robert de Luzarches to the
south fa~ade of the cathedral. To the left of the porch he saw the
beggars, and again obeyed Ruslcin ('put a sou into every beggar's
box who asks it there-it is none of your business whether they
1 'In Switzerland, Florence, Amiens, I have worked where Ruskin
worked,' wrote La Sizeranne (R.R.B., 9).
- La RiMe d'Amiens, 2.46, footnote