But of all the rooms at Saint-Graal, the one that gave you the thrillingest, the most exquisite emotion, was my mother’s. If my grandmother’s room represented the silence and the strangeness of the past, and my uncle’s the actuality and activity of the present, my mother’s room represented the Eternal Feminine, smiling at you, enthralling you, in its loveliest incarnation; singing to you, amid delicate luxuries, of youth and beauty and happiness, and the fine romance of mirth. In my mother’s room, for example, so far from being old-fashioned, the furniture was of the very latest, daintiest design, fresh from Paris. The wallpaper was cream-coloured, with garlands of pink and blue flowers trailing over it, and here and there a shepherd’s hat and a shepherd’s pipes tied together by a long fluttering blue ribbon. The chairs and the sofa were covered with chintz, gayer even, if that were possible, than this paper: chintz on which pretty little bright-blue birds flew about among poppies, red as scarlet, and pale-green leaves. The window-curtains and the bed-curtains were of the same merry chintz; the bed-quilt was an eider-down of the softest blush-rose silk; the bedstead was enamelled white, and so highly polished that you could see an obscure reflection of your features in it. And then, the dressing-table, with its wide bevelled mirror, and the glistening treasures displayed upon it!—the open jewel-case, and the rings, brooches, bracelets, necklaces, that sparkled in it; the silver-backed brushes, the silver-topped bottles, the silver-framed hand-glass; the hundred shining trifles. One whole side of the room had been converted into a vast bay-window; this looked due south, over the floweriest part of our flower-garden, over the rich green country beyond, miles away, to where the Pyrenees gloomed purple. As a shield against the sun the window was fitted with Venetian blinds, besides the curtains; and every morning, when I crept in from my own adjoining room, to pay my mother a visit, it was given me to witness a marvellous transformation scene. At first all was dark, or nearly dark, so that you could only distinguish things as shadowy masses. But presently my mother’s maid, Aurélie, arrived with the chocolate, and drew back the curtains, filling the room with a momentary twilight; then she opened the Venetian blinds, and suddenly there was a gush of sunlight, and the room gleamed and glittered like a room in a crystal palace. Sweet airs came in from the garden, bird-notes came in, the day came in, dancing and laughing joyously; and my mother and I joyously laughed back at it. Another transformation scene, at which I was permitted to assist, took place in this room in the evening, when my mother dressed for dinner. I would sit at a distance, not to be in the way, and watch the ceremony with eyes as round as O’s doubtless, and certainly with an enravished soul; while Aurélie did my mother’s hair (sprinkling it, as a culmination, with a pinch of diamond-dust, according to the mode of the period), and moved to and from the wardrobe, where my mother’s bewildering confections of silks and laces were enshrined, and her satin slippers glimmered in a row on their shelf. And after the toilet was completed, and my mother, in dazzling loveliness, had kissed me good-bye and vanished, I would linger a little, to gaze about the temple in which such miracles could happen; taking up and studying one by one the combs, brushes, powder-puffs, or what not, as you would study the instruments employed by a conjurer; and removing the stoppers from the scent-bottles, to inhale their delicious fragrance....
“Don’t you think,” asked my companion, “that it’s time you paid the waiter and we were off?”
I looked up, and suddenly there was Rouen—Rouen, the café on the quays, Madame’s empty glass of milk, and Madame herself questioning me from anxious eyes.
“Yes,” I said, “I think it’s time we were off; and what’s more, I’ll tell you this: every room in the universe has not only its peculiar physiognomy and its peculiar significance, but it wakes a particular sentiment also, and has a special smell.”
“Oh, I see,” said Madame; “that’s why you’ve been silent all this while.”
So I paid the waiter, and we took the puffing little steamboat, down the river, between its green banks and its flowery islets, back to La Bouille.