There are dreadful mornings in January that chill one's heart. I awoke on
this particular day with a vague feeling of anxiety. It had thawed during
the night, and when I cast my eyes over the country from the threshold, it
looked to me like an immense dirty grey rag, soiled with mud and rent to
tatters.
The horizon was shrouded in a curtain of fog, in which the oak-trees along
the walk lugubriously extended their dark arms, like a row of spectres
guarding the vast mass of vapour spreading out behind them. The fields had
sunk, and were covered with great sheets of water, at the edge of which
hung the remnants of dirty snow. The loud roar of the Durance was
increasing in the distance.
Winter imparts health and strength to one's frame when the sun is clear
and the ground dry. The air makes the tips of your ears tingle, you walk
merrily along the frozen pathways, which ring with a silvery sound beneath
your tread. But I know of nothing more saddening than dull, thawing
weather: I hate the damp fogs which weigh one's shoulders down.
I shivered in the presence of that copper-like sky, and hastened to retire
indoors, making up my mind that I would not go out into the fields that
day. There was plenty of work in and around the farm-buildings.
Jacques had been up a long time. I heard him whistling in a shed, where he
was helping some men remove sacks of corn. The boy was already eighteen
years old; he was a tall fellow, with strong arms. He had not had an uncle
Lazare to spoil him and teach him Latin, and he did not go and dream
beneath the willows at the riverside. Jacques had become a real peasant,
an untiring worker, who got angry when I touched anything, telling me I
was getting old and ought to rest.
And as I was watching him from a distance, a sweet lithe creature, leaping
on my shoulders, clapped her little hands to my eyes, inquiring:
"Who is it?"