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Updated: June 18, 2025
But it was not for nothing, as my aunt well knew, that she had rung for Francoise, since at Combray a person whom one 'didn't know at all' was as incredible a being as any mythological deity, and it was apt to be forgotten that after each occasion on which there had appeared in the Rue du Saint-Esprit or in the Square one of these bewildering phenomena, careful and exhaustive researches had invariably reduced the fabulous monster to the proportions of a person whom one 'did know, either personally or in the abstract, in his or her civil status as being more or less closely related to some family in Combray.
On that day the royal apartments were open to the public, and at the hour of High Mass the crowd flowed back towards the vestibule of the chapel to witness what was called the procession of the Cordons Bleus. The "Blue Ribbons" were the knights of the Order Du Saint-Esprit in their robes of ceremony, who came to range themselves in the choir according to the date of their creation.
I must observe that the ceremony of the sword and the accolade are not performed at the reception of those who, having already another order, are supposed to have received them; like the chevaliers of the Saint-Esprit and of Saint-Michel, and the chevaliers of Saint-Louis. Their Catholic Majesties being gone, we withdrew to my house, where a very grand dinner was prepared.
She would sacrifice herself for love. She would go away with Michael. No one would ever speak to her again, but she did not care. Involuntarily she unclasped a diamond Saint-Esprit from her throat which the duke had given her, and laid it on her writing-table. She should never wear it again. She no longer had the right to wear it. It was a unique jewel. But what did she care for jewels now!
Beyond the village of Conans, General Gilly met an orderly sent to him by Colonel Saint-Laurent to inform him that he, the colonel, had occupied Pont Saint-Esprit, and that the Duc d'Angouleme, finding himself thus caught between two fires, had just sent General d'Aultanne, chief of staff in the royal army, to him, to enter into negotiations for a surrender.
I must observe that the ceremony of the sword and the accolade are not performed at the reception of those who, having already another order, are supposed to have received them; like the chevaliers of the Saint-Esprit and of Saint-Michel, and the chevaliers of Saint-Louis. Their Catholic Majesties being gone, we withdrew to my house, where a very grand dinner was prepared.
To live in, Combray was a trifle depressing, like its streets, whose houses, built of the blackened stone of the country, fronted with outside steps, capped with gables which projected long shadows downwards, were so dark that one had, as soon as the sun began to go down, to draw back the curtains in the sitting-room windows; streets with the solemn names of Saints, not a few of whom figured in the history of the early lords of Combray, such as the Rue Saint-Hilaire, the Rue Saint-Jacques, in which my aunt's house stood, the Rue Sainte-Hildegarde, which ran past her railings, and the Rue du Saint-Esprit, on to which the little garden gate opened; and these Combray streets exist in so remote a quarter of my memory, painted in colours so different from those in which the world is decked for me to-day, that in fact one and all of them, and the church which towered above them in the Square, seem to me now more unsubstantial than the projections of my magic-lantern; while at times I feel that to be able to cross the Rue Saint-Hilaire again, to engage a room in the Rue de l'Oiseau, in the old hostelry of the Oiseau Flesche, from whose windows in the pavement used to rise a smell of cooking which rises still in my mind, now and then, in the same warm gusts of comfort, would be to secure a contact with the unseen world more marvellously supernatural than it would be to make Golo's acquaintance and to chat with Genevieve de Brabant.
In the first weeks of our Combray holidays, when the days ended early, we would still be able to see, as we turned into the Rue du Saint-Esprit, a reflection of the western sky from the windows of the house and a band of purple at the foot of the Calvary, which was mirrored further on in the pond; a fiery glow which, accompanied often by a cold that burned and stung, would associate itself in my mind with the glow of the fire over which, at that very moment, was roasting the chicken that was to furnish me, in place of the poetic pleasure I had found in my walk, with the sensual pleasures of good feeding, warmth and rest.
There we had much more water, and went along rapidly; but a dangerous high wind called the Mistral hit us when we were about a quarter league above the bridge known as Pont Saint-Esprit. The boatmen were unable to reach the bank. They lost their heads, and set themselves to praying instead of working, while a furious wind and a strong current were driving the boat towards the bridge!
'If you want to see student life par excellence, you can scarcely improve upon the shop I'm in myself the Hôtel du Saint-Esprit, in the Rue St. Jacques. And after he had examined me in some detail touching that house of entertainment, 'Yes, he said, 'then, if you will bespeak a room for me there, I'll come to-morrow and stop for a week or ten days. 'A week or ten days? I questioned.
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