psalm. When that was finished a procession of little girls filed out.
They were dressed in white, and they looked very cold in their spring
muslins. After making a circuit of the lonely quarter, chanting
meanwhile a melancholy hymn, they noiselessly re-entered the chapel.
There was no one in the street to see them save ourselves, and the
thought came to me that neither was there any one in the gray heavens
above to see them; the overcast sky seemed as lonely as the solitary
street. That little band of orphaned children intensified my feeling
of sorrow and added to the disenchantment of the May night, and I had a
consciousness of the vanity of prayer, of the emptiness of all things.

In the Marine Garden my sadness increased. It was extremely cold, and we
shivered in our light spring wraps. There was not a single promenader
to be seen. The large chestnut trees all abloom and the foliage, in
the glory of its tender hue, formed a feathery green and white
avenue--emptiness was here too; all of this intertwined magnificence of
branch and flower, seen of no one, unfolded itself to the indifferent
sky that stretched above it cold and gray. And in the long flower beds
there was a profusion of roses, peonies and lilies that seemed also to
have mistaken the season, for they appeared to shiver, as we did, in the
chill twilight.

I have found that the melancholy one sometimes feels in the springtime
usually transcends that felt in autumn, for the reason, doubtless, that
the former is so out of harmony with the promise of the season.

The demoralized state into which I was thrown by everything about me
gave me a longing to play a boyish trick upon Jeanne. There came to me
a desire (one that I frequently felt) to have some sort of revenge
upon her, because her disposition was so much more mature and yet more