Here we leave the dome of the Panthéon on our right. Below us the lights are gradually thinning out; we are passing over the crowded faubourgs, where thousands of poor and tired human beings are resting in sleep.
An ocean of darkness and silence opens up before us; we sail into it. The breeze freshens, and the glowing blaze of Paris soon fades away in the distance.
From now on the minutes drag, in the awful silence of this mysterious night, and every moment is heavy with anxiety. Those hours are endless, really hard to live, until at last the gray dawn steps out of the horizon.
Nature begins to awaken, and, with the first gleam of daylight, slowly the world comes back to life.
The first cry of a quail or the cackle of a pheasant is a delight to our ears. A dog barks and another howls. Lazy and sleepy peasants, leading huge oxen, drag themselves out of their farms, on their way to a hard day’s work in the fields. The cocks crow lustily, and, in the distance, from the little town of Nemours, comes the melodious call of a bugle, arousing “Pitou,” the French “Tommy Atkins,” from his sleep.
The sun drives away the soft gray mist that lingers over the meadows; a few shadows here and there still mark the wooded valleys; but they soon melt away, and a glorious summer morning, in the beautiful land of Burgundy, bursts upon us from every side.
“Oh! qui n’a pas senti son cœur battre plus vite,
A l’heure où sous le ciel l’homme est seul avec Dieu!”Alf. de Musset: Le Saule, IV.
II.
WE ARE now passing over the little hamlet of Uri, and the voice of a cuckoo-clock tells us the hour, as it pipes up in the breeze its five double notes.