Yes, yes, I am very fond of the autumn, and my darling boy liked it as well as I did, not only on account of the pleasure there is in gathering round a fine large fire, but also on account of the squalls themselves, the wind and the dead leaves.  There is a charm in braving them.  How many times we have both gone out for a walk through the country despite cold and threatening clouds.  We were wrapped up and shod with thick boots; I took his hand and we started off at haphazard.  He was five years old then and trotted along like a little man.  Heavens! it is five-and-twenty years ago.  We went up the narrow lane strewn with damp black leaves; the tall gray poplars stripped of their foliage allowed a view of the horizon, and we could see in the distance, under a violet sky streaked with cold and yellowish bands, the low thatched roofs and the red chimneys from which issued little bluish clouds blown away by the wind.  Baby jumped for joy, holding with his hand his hat which threatened to fly off, and looking at me with eyes glittering through tears brought into them by the breeze.  His cheeks were red with cold, and quite at the tip of his nose hung ready to drop a small transparent pearl.  But he was happy, and we skirted the wet meadows overflowed by the swollen river.  No more reeds, no more water lilies, no more flowers on the banks.  Some cows, up to mid-leg in damp herbage, were grazing quietly.

At the bottom of a ditch, near a big willow trunk, two little girls were huddled together under a big cloak wrapped about them.  They were watching their cows, their half bare feet in split wooden shoes and their two little chilled faces under the large hood.  From time to time large puddles of water in which the pale sky was reflected barred the way, and we remained for a moment beside these miniature lakes, rippling beneath the north wind, to see the leaves float on them.  They were the last.  We watched them detach themselves from the tops of the tall trees, whirl through the air and settle in the puddles.  I took my little boy in my arms and we went through them as we could.  At the boundaries of the brown and stubble fields was an overturned plough or an abandoned harrow.  The stripped vines were level with the ground, and their damp and knotty stakes were gathered in large piles.

I remember that one day in one of these autumnal walks, as we gained the top of the hill by a broken road which skirts the heath and leads to the old bridge, the wind suddenly began to blow furiously.  My darling, overwhelmed by it, caught hold of my leg and sheltered himself in the skirt of my coat.  My dog, for his part, stiffening his four legs, with his tail between the hind ones and his ears waving in the wind, looked up at me too.  I turned, the horizon was as gloomy as the interior of a church.  Huge black clouds were sweeping toward us, and the trees were bending and groaning on every side under the torrents of rain driven before the squall.