When,
before turning to leave the church, I genuflected before the altar, I was
suddenly aware of a bittersweet scent of almonds emanating from the
hawthorn-blossom, and I then noticed on the flowers themselves little patches
of a creamier colour, beneath which I imagined that this scent must lie
concealed, as the taste of an almond cake lay beneath the burned parts, or that
of Mlle Vinteuil's cheeks beneath their freckles. Despite the motionless
silence of the hawthorns, this intermittent odour came to me like the murmuring
of an intense organic life with which the whole altar was quivering like a
hedgerow explored by living antennae, of which I was reminded by seeing some
stamens, almost red in colour, which seemed to have kept the springtime
virulence, the irritant power of stinging insects now transmuted into
flowers.
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