to those on which we had guests to dinner, and therefore she did not come
at all. Our 'guests' were practically limited to M. Swann, who, apart from
a few passing strangers, was almost the only person who ever came to the
house at Combray, sometimes to a neighbourly dinner (but less frequently
since his unfortunate marriage, as my family did not care to receive his
wife) and sometimes after dinner, uninvited. On those evenings when, as we
sat in front of the house beneath the big chestnut-tree and round the iron
table, we heard, from the far end of the garden, not the large and noisy
rattle which heralded and deafened as he approached with its ferruginous,
interminable, frozen sound any member of the household who had put it out
of action by coming in 'without ringing,' but the double peal--timid,
oval, gilded--of the visitors' bell, everyone would at once exclaim "A
visitor! Who in the world can it be?" but they knew quite well that it
could only be M. Swann. My great-aunt, speaking in a loud voice, to set an
example, in a tone which she endeavoured to make sound natural, would tell
the others not to whisper so; that nothing could be more unpleasant for a
stranger coming in, who would be led to think that people were saying
things about him which he was not meant to hear; and then my grandmother
would be sent out as a scout, always happy to find an excuse for an
additional turn in the garden, which she would utilise to remove
surreptitiously, as she passed, the stakes of a rose-tree or two, so as to
make the roses look a little more natural, as a mother might run her hand
through her boy's hair, after the barber had smoothed it down, to make it
stick out properly round his head.

And there we would all stay, hanging on the words which would fall from my
grandmother's lips when she brought us back her report of the enemy, as
though there had been some uncertainty among a vast number of possible
invaders, and then, soon after, my grandfather would say: "I can hear
Swann's voice." And, indeed, one could tell him only by his voice, for it