We went up into the Dungeon Tower and down into the souterrains, and then all along the rampart walls.
I love the way the little town crowds up close to the ramparts, the cobbled grass-grown streets, the roofs all softened and coloured by ages and weathers.
A child laughed down in the street; a woman called to it; there was a scamper of little feet, and the two of them were laughing together.
Off beyond the roofs we could see the blonde of the ripe grain fields, and the purple of the forests.
I had so intensely a sense of its all being for the last time. I said to Manon, "It can't last, it is too beautiful."
Tuesday, July 28th
One feels, in all these days, as if there were a great storm coming up. I keep thinking all of the time, there is a great storm coming up. That is an absurd thing to make note of, as if it had some strange meaning, as if it were not just that in all these days, really, always there is a storm coming up.
I never have known such storms, nor yet such sunsets. The sunsets are like the reflection of great battlefields beyond the world. One is frightened because of the sunsets, more than because of the storms. Every day while the sun shines there is the rumble of thunder about all the horizon. It is like the cannon of my dreams. All the time, while the sun shines, great thunder-clouds are gathering upon the horizon, mounting up from the horizon, white and yellow, and purple and black. The sunshine is heavy, and thick; you do not know if the sky is dark blue or purple, and at sunset the dark cloud-shapes threaten and menace.
Whatever one does, one has the feeling of doing it before the storm, in the teeth of the storm. When the storm does come, with its crashing and blinding, it brings no relief. It is as if these midsummer storms meant something for which the whole world waited.