Page:Storm Over Paris.pdf/110

then it would be an elderly woman, complaining about her evil fate, or a middle-aged worker, fired with the idea of making the world over. Often she would be able to forge her own troubles by glimpsing into the lives of others. But this time she walked alone.

In the fog all the passersby seemed reserved and solitary, each weighed down under his particular woe. Maybe that was the reason no one disturbed her, Anna thought; because each of them had a goal and a destination of his own. This one hurrying home to an anxious mother, that one to a home and children or to a friend, or to a sick wife. "Worst of all," her thoughts went on, "is when no one is waiting for you, when nothing happens to you, when nothing changes from day to day, when life settles over you and congeals-as in Madame Dabbie's house on the Avenue Republique."

As she approached the Place Republique a feeling of ease, almost light-heartedness, overcame her. Her morbid thoughts vanished into the rain. She saw Paris in a new light. A more intimate Paris. When the sad heavens seemed to hover closer to the people on the streets; when a thin rain drove into your face as you walked along. "Ah, what bad weather!" strangers would say to each other; using the occasion to draw into closer human contact, to open up their hearts. Yes, let the heart vibrate and stir, just like the weather, just like the ceaseless rain, without pause, without end. . .

"Hot chestnuts! Hot chestnuts!" The vendors of the street corners call out gayly. How good it is to stop and buy a little paper cone full of hot chestnuts and walk along, munching them, while the lights of the passing traffic reflect on the gleaming asphalt making grotesque the shadows of the pedestrians, like life seen in a concave mirror, distorting existence into fantasy.