The vision he is running away from is of the eyes, the mouths, the faces about to surround him, making the same grimaces, uttering the same remarks as last time, chewing, swallowing. He would have had to reply to them, smile. And, above all, to accept that he was happy because other people considered he had every reason to be happy: the blonde, sleek serenity of his wife; the feline grace of his two daughters, about whom the family banter would be repeated once more-"two beautiful girls, ready to be wed"; and the laden table, facing a bay window, through which, from this sixteenth story, you can study the topography of Paris, as if on a map; and his office located in the same apartment building, which will, by tradition, prompt a gruff observation from one relative ("some people have all the luck; they only have to cross the landing to go to work!")… This man has pictured all the small blessings whose sum total is supposed to make him happy. A great panic has overtaken him. He has seized his coat, closed the door behind him, trying to avoid slamming it, and rushed toward the staircase, dreading that he might encounter the first of the guests outside the elevator…

The old man picks up an armful of dead branches and adds it to a pile of leaves and dry stalks at the foot of a tree. The man and the woman listen to his slow footsteps on the gravel, louder on account of the cold and the silence. So all of this has always been here, they think. This life so different from theirs, a life filled with this calm, with actions that leave them time to notice the imperceptible fading of the light-coppery, pink, now mauve-and to watch it as their own musings ripple past. To let one's gaze roam amid the etched branches against the frozen sky, to sense, without really understanding it, that these moments are mysteriously significant and that even a distracted glance at the little tuft of grass between the stones of the old wall is a necessary part of this day's end, of its light, of its sky, of its unique life.