We went down the long straight street without meeting any one; as we drew near the “Chapel of the Orphans” we heard those within chanting a 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 sprightly than mine. I induced her to lean over and smell the lovely lilies, and while she was doing so I, by giving her head a very slight push, buried her nose deep in the flowers and it became covered with yellow pollen. She was indignant! And the thought that I had acted so rudely tended to make the walk home a very painful one. The beautiful evenings of May! Had I not cherished memories of those of preceding years, or had they in truth been like this one? Like this one in the cold and lonely garden? Had they ended so miserably as did this play-day with Jeanne? With a feeling of mortal weariness I said to myself: “And is this all!” an exclamation which soon afterwards became one of my most frequent unspoken reflections, a phrase indeed that I might well have taken for my motto.