Chapter 3
THE TWO WAYST
o the child Marcel the two favourite walks of the family
seemed to be in diametrically opposite directions, so that no
two points in the world could be so utterly separated as their
never-reached destinations. Whether they left the house by the
front door or by the garden-gate, they would tum one way for
Mereglise and the other way for Saint-Eman. To Mereglise, since
the Rue Saint-Hilaire, though a short-cut, was less interesting,
they would go by the Rue des Lavoirs and the passerelle, up the
hawthorn path beside the Pre Catelan, and along the Chemin de
la Croix-Rompue to the Mereglise turning by the site of Saint-
Hilaire. In his novel Proust called Mereglise 'Meseglise', for
euphony; and as the way there went by the Pre Catelan, which
he had transformed into Swann's park, he was able to say with
truth that it was also Swann's Way.
A few yards from the Pont Saint-Hilaire the Mereglise way
climbs a slope: behind, the spire of Saint-Jacques rises to its full
height, and sends its last chime to the departing wanderer; but in
front, past the level-crossing of the railway on its way to Brou, is
the landscape of rolling plain already seen from the top of the
hawthorn path, pierced by the spires of village churches and
barred by dark woods on the far horizon. The air here has a limpid,
milky quality which in England one breathes only in the West
Country; and a warm wind, 'the tutelary genius of Combray', is
always blowing. To the Narrator this wind seems to bring a
message from Gilberte at Laon,1 as well it might: for though
Proust intended to lead his reader astray to the cathedral-town of
Laon in Seine-et-Marne, 150 miles from Illiers, he was thinking
privately ofLaons at the northern end ofEure-et-Loire, near the
birthplace of the husband of Mme Goupil; and the road to Laons
may be seen from here. Can a daughter of Mme Goupil, or the
niece with whom Aunt Leonie sees her walking, have been the
first original of Gilberte?
1 I, '45