As I was even more when, on one of my walks, as I stepped out briskly on account of the weather, which, after several days of a precocious spring, had relapsed into winter (like the weather that we had invariably found awaiting us at Combray, in Holy Week),-seeing upon the boulevards that the chestnut-trees, though plunged in a glacial atmosphere that soaked through them like a stream of water, were none the less beginning, punctual guests, arrayed already for the party, and admitting no discouragement, to shape and chisel and curve in its frozen lumps the irrepressible verdure whose steady growth the abortive power of the cold might hinder but could not succeed in restraining-I reflected that already the Ponte Vecchio was heaped high with an abundance of hyacinths and anemones, and that the spring sunshine was already tinging the waves of the Grand Canal with so dusky an azure, with emeralds so splendid that when they washed and were broken against the foot of one of Titian's paintings they could vie with it in the richness of their colouring.
Zoriontsuago, ordea, mandaturen batera irten eta kalean barrena arin-arinka nindoalarik, eguraldi gozakaitzaren erruz, udaberri goiztiarreko lehen egunak ziplo birbihurtuak baitziren ostera negu-giroko (Combrayn, Aste Santutan, normalean izan ohi genuenaren antzeko), eta ikusten nituelarik bulebarretan gaztainondoak, aire izoztu eta hezea zeriela, baina hala ere, gonbidatu maratzak iduri, galako trajea jadanik jantzita, etsitzeari amore eman gabe, beren morkots hormatuak biribiltzen eta zizelkatzen ari, berdetasun eutsi ezinezko hura pusaka, hotzaren ahalmen eragozleak galgatu bai baina ernamuintze gero eta ahaltsuagoa inola ere bertan behera gerarazi ahal izan gabe, orduan nik pentsatzen nuen ezen, ordurako, Ponte Vechio-a jadanik ihaurri zegokeela ausarki hiazintoz eta anemonaz, eta udaberriko eguzkiak engoitik tindatzen zihardukeela Kanal Handiko uhinak halako urdin ilun batez eta hain esmeralda noblez non, Tizianoren pinturen oinetara errenditzera etorriak, berauekiko lehiakide gerta baitzitezkeen kolore-joritasunean.