He shrugged his old shoulders, and said he had some fine fresh chocolate and nougat out from Paris.
We went back and read the papers and ate the chocolates and nougat on the terrace.
A host of little white butterflies kept clouding over the terrace steps, between the pots of roses and heliotrope.
There was a great brief thunderstorm while we were at lunch, and then the sun came out.
We motored through the wet sunshiny country, softly dipped and softly lifted, blue-green forest and wide ripe harvest fields, blue and purple and crimson beet fields, long low brown and rust-red towns with square church towers, Sunday people out in the doorways, and swallows always flying low and crying.
We had tea in Soissons, at Maurizi's, and went to the cathedral, where the offices were over, and to the pastrycook's, Monsieur Pigot's, to buy some cherry tarts.
Home by the long straight road between the poplars.
It was so cold suddenly that one imagined autumn. There was a wind come up, and some yellow leaves were flying with it.
After dinner we had a fire lighted in the tiled room. The heat brought out all the sweetness of the roses in the blue bowls, and the flames sent lovely lights and shadows to play along the old stone walls.
I do not think I would be afraid if it were not for my dreams.