My uncle Lazare heard its wail in the dreaminess of his agony. He endeavoured to turn towards Babet, and, still smiling, said:
“I have seen the child and die very happy.”
Then he gazed at the pale sky and yellow fields, and, throwing back his head, heaved a gentle sigh.
No tremor agitated uncle Lazare’s body; he died as one falls asleep.
We had become so calm that we remained silent and with dry eyes. In the presence of such great simplicity in death, all we experienced was a feeling of serene sadness. Twilight had set in, uncle Lazare’s farewell had left us confident, like the farewell of the sun which dies at night to be born again in the morning.
Such was my autumn day, which gave me a son, and carried off my uncle Lazare in the peacefulness of the twilight.
IV
WINTER
There are dreadful mornings in January that chill one’s heart. I awoke on this particular day with a vague feeling of anxiety. It had thawed during the night, and when I cast my eyes over the country from the threshold, it looked to me like an immense dirty grey rag, soiled with mud and rent to tatters.
The horizon was shrouded in a curtain of fog, in which the oak-trees along the walk lugubriously extended their dark arms, like a row of spectres guarding the vast mass of vapour spreading out behind them. The fields had sunk, and were covered with great sheets of water, at the edge of which hung the remnants of dirty snow. The loud roar of the Durance was increasing in the distance.