But the philosophy of Combray made it impossible for Françoise to expect that the strikes in Canada could have any repercussion on the use of pulled bread. “So long as the world goes round, look, there’ll be masters to keep us on the trot, and servants to do their bidding.” In disproof of this theory of perpetual motion, for the last quarter of an hour my mother (who probably did not employ the same measures of time as Françoise in reckoning the duration of the latter’s dinner) had been saying:

“What on earth can they be doing? They’ve been at least two hours at their dinner.”