Monday, July 10th
All day long there has been sunshine, and the sky has been blue. There were great white clouds that mounted up over the city, and that one kept imagining was the smoke of battle. The blue of the sky was wonderful, infinite and near, like something of music or of religion, and the sunshine was like golden wine. But those soft white puffs of cloud were terrible.
At the top of the Champs Elysées, behind the Arch, the clouds were driven up as if it were from the mouths of cannon.
It must be just like that the smoke is rising in the sunshine over the high edge of a field I used to know. They say that field is laid across everywhere with railroad tracks, along which monster grey cannon crawl up to their positions, and crawl back across again when their work is done. Hundreds of horses are corralled in the field, and everywhere there are dotted little white tents. Sometimes black faces come to the openings of the tents, and one would think of the Village Nègre people went to see in Magic City, ages and ages ago.
It seems strange that when the great white clouds mounted up from behind the Arch of Triumph, the city did not rock beneath them. It seems strange that the great white clouds rose silently and really were only clouds.