It was three o'clock in the afternoon and in the middle of one of those
January days that turned out to be one of those hesitant and golden days of
spring. Inside the houses the fires were allowed to die down and the windows
were opened to the mild air. It seemed as though comfort, leisure, idle
indifference had abandoned the houses to take their places in the open air in
front of the houses and in the public gardens. People marched quickly through
the house in order to get out, just as the day before they marched quickly along
the street to get inside. It was the time of day when, the college students
being obliged to go into their classrooms, one of them asked permission from the
school master to leave the window open. Also, from the classroom, one could hear
the distant footsteps of the students passing through the courtyard, halting for
a moment to look at their school friends and trying to prolong their time
outside. From his chair the school master waved to one of his colleagues who was
going back into his classroom. And a looking-glass hidden in a napkin having
caught a ray of sunlight sent it flickering over the walls of the classroom,
leap over the chair and even onto the nose of the school master. No one wanted
to do any work and the boys themselves inside the room had that joyful air as if
it were the day before the holidays.
They crossed the Tuileries. Men and women were out walking, slowly as if they
had to make an effort to break through the surrounding air, happy as if had
brushed against them in passing. And many of them had the contented and lazy
look of people taking a bath. Up on the balconies of the houses on the rue de
Rivoli haloes ascended to their summit like an annunciation and seemed to smile
down from the heavens. At one window a ray of sunlight had streaked the window
pane with its purple signature, like an immobile flash of lightning from the
talented hand of a glass-maker. The pond in the Tuileries was only half thawed.
But in between the sheets of ice the water was as blue as in springtime. They
took the rue Boissy-d'Anglas which was in the shade, but on arriving in the
Faubourg Saint-Honoré they were forced to stumble into the sunshine that poured
down over the ground in such abundance that its reflexion was blinding and
forced Jean to hold his hand low over his brow in order to see in front of him.
All the flower sellers had resumed their places at the corner of their shops in
the open air, deserted the day before, now heaped up with primroses, lilac,
hyacinths, stocks and cowslips. And at twenty paces away, as though one were
entering their territory, under the mildest of skies, one inhaled so many
perfumes permeated by the women, that it made one feel giddy.