And that feeling of the end of things grows always stronger. There is no reason. Nobody, here at least, troubles about war.
This morning we were caught by a wonderful thunderstorm out in the fields.
Now from the terrace we are watching the sunset, all of thunder-clouds, purple and blue and black, and of fire.
Three of the white peacocks have come up to tea with us, under the big cedar.
Wednesday, July 29th, late of the night
I went up to Paris. I thought if I could feel how Paris felt to-day, I would know if the menace is real. Here one knows nothing.
There is sunshine and rain, and the fields are white to the harvest, the heat hangs over the long white roads, and the shade of the forests is grateful.
The people of the little town go about their ways; their sabots clatter on the cobbles, and their voices have part with the shrilling of cigale and the call of the swallows. The children out of school, at noon and at sunset, play in the Place aux Armes, and the women come there to market in the mornings, under the limes, and after work the men lounge there against the moat wall.
But since Sunday I have so strange a feeling, a sense of its being the end of things. The end of—I don't know what. I want to make notes of things, not of the great things that are happening, but of the little things. I want to feel especially all the little everyday dear accustomed things, to take hold of the moods of them, and gather up their memories, to be put away and kept, and turned back to always afterwards.
I want to make notes of the sweetness of my room to wake to, all the garden coming in through the drawn blinds.