The Hundred Days

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The sun emerged from the clouds, bloody-red, tiny, and irritable, but was quickly swallowed up again into the cold gray of the morning. A sullen day was breaking. It was March 20, a mere day before the start of spring. One could see no sign of this. It rained and stormed across the whole land, and the people shivered.

The weather in Paris had been stormy since the previous night. The birds fell silent after a quick morning greeting. Cold and spiteful wisps of mist rose insidiously from the cracks between the cobbles, moistening anew the stones that had just been blown dry by the morning wind. The mist lingered about the willows and chestnuts in the parks and hovered along the edges of the avenues, causing the nascent tree buds to tremble, chasing clearly visible shivers along the damp backs of the patient livery horses and forcing down to ground level the industrious morning smoke that was here and there attempting to rise from chimneys. The streets smelled of fire, mist, and rain, of damp clothes, of lurking snow clouds and temporarily averted hail, of unfriendly winds, soaked leather, and foul sewers.

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