nfronting it with its type in nature, to form a critical estimate
of the truth of the work of art. Before our eyes, in the distance, a
promised or an accursed land, Roussainville, within whose walls I had
never penetrated, Roussainville was now, when the rain had ceased for
us, still being chastised, like a village in the Old Testament, by
all the innumerable spears and arrows of the storm, which beat down
obliquely upon the dwellings of its inhabitants, or else had already
received the forgiveness of the Almighty, Who had restored to it the
light of His sun, which fell upon it in rays of uneven length, like the
rays of a monstrance upon an altar.

Sometimes, when the weather had completely broken, we were obliged to go
home and to remain shut up indoors. Here and there, in the distance, in
a landscape which, what with the failing light and saturated atmosphere,
resembled a seascape rather, a few solitary houses clinging to the lower
slopes of a hill whose heights were buried in a cloudy darkness shone
out like little boats which had folded their sails and would ride at
anchor, all night, upon the sea. But what mattered rain or storm?
In summer, bad weather is no more than a passing fit of superficial
ill-temper expressed by the permanent, underlying fine weather; a very
different thing from the fluid and unstable 'fine weather' of winter,
its very opposite, in fact; for has it not (firmly established in the
soil, on which it has taken solid form in dense masses of foliage over
which the rain may pour in torrents without weakening the resistance
offered by their real and lasting happiness) hoisted, to keep them
flying throughout the season, in the village streets, on the walls of
the houses and in their gardens, its silken banners, violet and white.
Sitting in the little parlour, where I would pass the time until dinner
with a book, I might hear the water dripping from our chestnut-trees,
but I would know that the shower would only glaze and brighten the
greenness of their thick, crumpled leaves, and that they themselves
had undertaken to remain there, like pledges of summer, all through the
rainy night, to assure me of the fine weather's continuing; it might
rain as it pleased, but to-morrow, over the white fence of Tansonville,
there would surge and flow, numerous as ever, a sea of little
heart-shaped leaves; and without the least anxiety I could watch the
poplar in the Rue des Perchamps praying for mercy, bowing in de