I imagine his loving the sound of the dead leaves about his feet, as I used to love it when I was a child.
The sense of autumn and the end of things is heavy upon Paris.
All the news is good. It is just the sadness of autumn—
Les sanglots longs
des violons
de l'automne.
I went to meet Chantal in the Cour la Reine.
We sat on the top of the river wall. No boats passed along the river, and few people passed under the slowly falling leaves.
We were very alone with Paris.
An old shabby man came by, reading an evening paper as he walked slowly. We asked him what the news was. He stopped and stood by the wall with us and read good news to us. He said, "I fought through '70. It was just so in '70."
Chantal said to me, "How dreadful to be old! The night of the first big victory, let's get somebody to take us out with the crowd on the boulevards."