While we sat
at luncheon, by opening her window, the lady opposite had sent packing, in
the twinkling of an eye, from beside my chair--to sweep in a single stride
over the whole width of our dining-room--a sunbeam which had lain down
there for its midday rest and returned to continue it there a moment
later. At school, during the one o'clock lesson, the sun made me sick
with impatience and boredom as it let fall a golden stream that crept to
the edge of my desk, like an invitation to the feast at which I could not
myself arrive before three o'clock, until the moment when Francoise came
to fetch me at the school-gate, and we made our way towards the
Champs-Elysees through streets decorated with sunlight, dense with people,
over which the balconies, detached by the sun and made vaporous, seemed to
float in front of the houses like clouds of gold. Alas! in the
Champs-Elysees I found no Gilberte; she had not yet arrived. Motionless,
on the lawn nurtured by the invisible sun which, here and there, kindled
to a flame the point of a blade of grass, while the pigeons that had
alighted upon it had the appearance of ancient sculptures which the
gardener's pick had heaved to the surface of a hallowed soil, I stood with
my eyes fixed on the horizon, expecting at every moment to see appear the
form of Gilberte following that of her governess, behind the statue that
seemed to be holding out the child, which it had in its arms, and which
glistened in the stream of light, to receive benediction from the sun.
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