ut monotonous moments jogging along one after the other;
it stops just at the foreshortened shadow at your feet, and my arms
which I was about to open are, you see, arms of lead.

"Before I entered these rooms love looked like you and the future shone
like a festival just beginning. What is left of all that? I no longer
hear the chimes of golden promises ringing in my ears. I no longer feel
the hosannas of my heart, and it's as though I scarcely saw you in the
gloomy corner where you are standing."

I see the little dwelling where the hesitant evening has not yet taken
its place. The silence is laid bare, life is showing us her skeleton;
through the mottled panes one sees that the hour has red eyes and the
walls confronting us in their inflexible truthfulness have become our
four upright witnesses.

I feel like running away.

XI

When everybody was assigned a seat in the carriages, whips cracked and
the procession got under way.

The carriage at the head in a splash of sunshine drew the whole line
after it, shattering the massive silence of the street. The occupants
were still settling themselves, the ladies with a great rustling of silk
and a vast deal of twisting and turning before they got themselves
comfortably installed, while the men were obliged to sit forward on the
edge of the seats and be very careful of the disposition of their legs.

"Lovely weather," said one of the two ladies, "they're lucky." No one
answered. They held themselves in abeyance for the usual conviviality to
come later, and passed the time looking through the lowered windows at
the unknown quarter through which the procession was winding, where the
houses sank upon each other and the people in workaday clothes stood
still to stare with eyes of envy.

The second carriage had set off at a rapid pace; the coachman was
holding in his frisky pair.

"Say what you like, she's a beautiful bride."

Like most very old ladies, this one suggested widowhood. Even in talking
she exhaled the attenuated sadness that invests old people with a
protective halo.

"Oh, she's just like the rest. What's in her favor is that she's fair. A
brunette bride always makes you think of a fly in milk. At least, that's
my opinion...."

That was a good start. One remark led to another; the conversation
livened up. The ladies in their silk gowns felt conscious of sharing in
pomp and an important ceremony.

"I was told she ran away from home last year, with..