Chapter VIII

When your hand, on an evening of the sluggish
months, commits to the odorous cupboards the
fruits of your orchard, I seem to see you calmly
arranging our old perfumed and sweet-tasting
memories.

And my relish for them returns, as it was in
former years in the gold and the sun and with
the wind on my lips; and then I see a thousand
moments done and gone, and their gladness and
their laughter and their cries and their fevers.

The past reawakens with so great a desire to be
the present still, with its life and strength,
that the hardly extinguished fires suddenly burn
my body, and my heart rejoices to the point of
swooning.

O beautiful luminous fruits in these autumn
shadows, jewels fallen from the heavy necklace
of russet summer, splendours that light up our
monotonous hours, what a ruddy and spacious
awakening you stir up in us!