It is Sunday. Through my open window a living ray of April has made
its way into my room. It has transformed the faded flowers of the
wallpaper and restored to newness the Turkey-red stuff which covers my
dressing-table.

I dress carefully, dallying to look at myself in the glass, closely and
farther away, in the fresh scent of soap. I try to make out whether my
eyes are little or big. They are the average, no doubt, but it really
seems to me that they have a tender brightness.

Then I look outside. It would seem that the town, under its misty
blankets in the hollow of the valley, is awaking later than its
inhabitants.

These I can see from up here, spreading abroad in the streets, since it
is Sunday. One does not recognize them all at once, so changed are
they by their unusual clothes;--women, ornate with color, and more
monumental than on week days; some old men, slightly straightened for
the occasion; and some very lowly people, whom only their cleanness
vaguely disguises.

The weak sunshine is dressing the red roofs and the blue roofs and the
sidewalks, and the tiny little stone setts all pressed together like
pebbles, where polished shoes are shining and squeaking. In that old
house at the corner, a house like a round lantern of shadow, gloomy old
Eudo is encrusted. It forms a comical blot, as though traced on an old
etching. A little further, Madame Piot's house bulges forth, glazed
like pottery. By the side of these uncommon dwellings one takes no
notice of the others, with their gray walls and shining curtains,