The House of the Combrays

E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Paul Ereaut, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net/)

One evening in the winter of 1868 or 1869, my father-in-law, Moisson, with whom I was chatting after dinner, took up a book that was lying on the table, open at the page where I had stopped reading, and said:
Ah! you are reading Mme. de la Chanterie?
Yes, I replied. A fine book; do you know it?
Of course! I even know the heroine.
Mme. de la Chanterie!
—— By her real name Mme. de Combray. I lived three months in her house.
Rue Chanoinesse?
No, not in the Rue Chanoinesse, where she did not live, any more than she was the saintly woman of Balzac's novel;—but at her Château of Tournebut d'Aubevoye near Gaillon!
Gracious, Moisson, tell me about it; and without further solicitation, Moisson told me the following story: