A child laughed down in the street; a woman called to it; there was a scamper of little feet, and the two of them were laughing together. Off beyond the roofs we could see the blonde of the ripe grain fields, and the purple of the forests. I had so intensely a sense of its all being for the last time. I said to Manon, "It can't last, it is too beautiful." Tuesday, July 28th One feels, in all these days, as if there were a great storm coming up. I keep thinking all of the time, there is a great storm coming up. That is an absurd thing to make note of, as if it had some strange meaning, as if it were not just that in all these days, really, always there is a storm coming up. I never have known such storms, nor yet such sunsets. The sunsets are like the reflection of great battlefields beyond the world. One is frightened because of the sunsets, more than because of the storms. Every day while the sun shines there is the rumble of thunder about all the horizon. It is like the cannon of my dreams. All the time, while the sun shines, great thunder-clouds are gathering upon the horizon, mounting up from the horizon, white and yellow, and purple and black. The sunshine is heavy, and thick; you do not know if the sky is dark blue or purple, and at sunset the dark cloud-shapes threaten and menace. Whatever one does, one has the feeling of doing it before the storm, in the teeth of the storm. When the storm does come, with its crashing and blinding, it brings no relief. It is as if these midsummer storms meant something for which the whole world waited. And that feeling of the end of things grows always stronger. There is no reason. Nobody, here at least, troubles about war. This morning we were caught by a wonderful thunderstorm out in the fields. Now from the terrace we are watching the sunset, all of thunder-clouds, purple and blue and black, and of fire. Three of the white peacocks have come up to tea with us, under the big cedar. Wednesday, July 29th, late of the night I went up to Paris. I thought if I could feel how Paris felt to-day, I would know if the menace is real. Here one knows nothing. There is sunshine and rain, and the fields are white to the harvest, the heat hangs over the long white roads, and the shade of the forests is grateful. The people of the little town go about their ways; their sabots clatter on the cobbles, and their voices have part with the shrilling of cigale and the call of the swallows. The children out of school, at noon and at sunset, play in the Place aux Armes, and the women come there to market in the mornings, under the limes, and after work the men lounge there against the moat wall.