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The pearls and feathers and the manipulations of Franchise's artistic fingers transformed Patty's head into the semblance of an old French miniature, and even Patty herself cast an approving glance at the pretty reflection in the gilt-framed mirror. The girls were wild with enthusiasm over Patty's appearance, though truth to tell, their own effects were scarcely less picturesque.
The time had long passed when, on our first coming to spend our holidays at Combray, we had been of equal importance, in Franchise's eyes, with my aunt.
And this lad, who was regarded, and quite rightly, in the town as a 'bad character, was so abounding in that spirit which had served to decorate the porch of Saint-Andre-des-Champs, and particularly in the feelings of respect due, in Franchise's eyes, to all 'poor invalids, and, above all, to her own 'poor mistress, that he had, when he bent down to raise my aunt's head from her pillow, the same air of preraphaelite simplicity and zeal which the little angels in the has-reliefs wear, who throng, with tapers in their hands, about the deathbed of Our Lady, as though those carved faces of stone, naked and grey like trees in winter, were, like them, asleep only, storing up life and waiting to flower again in countless plebeian faces, reverend and cunning as the face of Theodore, and glowing with the ruddy brilliance of ripe apples.
And so none of those whom she had allowed upstairs to her room, after considerable hesitation and at Franchise's urgent request, and who in the course of their visit had shewn how unworthy they were of the honour which had been done them by venturing a timid: "Don't you think that if you were just to stir out a little on really fine days...?" or who, on the other hand, when she said to them: "I am very low, very low; nearing the end, dear friends!" had replied: "Ah, yes, when one has no strength left!
I felt no small degree of pride, either, in Franchise's presence at this return to humane conditions which, not an hour after Mamma had refused to come up to my room and had sent the snubbing message that I was to go to sleep, raised me to the dignity of a grown-up person, brought me of a sudden to a sort of puberty of sorrow, to emancipation from tears.
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