““The day on which he was buried was beautifully sunny. No matter where one looked, the sky had a clean-washed appearance. There was not a trace of a cloud to be seen anywhere in its vast expanse. It was one of those days that made one want to open doors and gates to release the last traces of winter, to watch them disappear like thin wisps of smoke into the farthest reaches of the sky. It is true that older people still wore their winter coats, but they no longer wore them buttoned up. As for the children, they seemed to have grown wings at their shoulders and wouldn’t think of wearing coats any longer. They swarmed into the streets on that day with such lively, untrammelled spirits that one might have thought they were a flock of swallows readying themselves for flight—straight or zigzag, high or low, in avian madness. It was, in short, a day unfit for sorrow.””
