not risen. I do not assert that the
sun did not rise; all I mean to say is that at Semur it was still dark,
as in a morning of winter, and when it gradually and slowly became day
many hours of the morning were already spent. And never shall I forget
the aspect of day when it came. It was like a ghost or pale shadow of
the glorious days of July with which we are usually blessed. The
barometer did not go down, nor was there any rain, but an unusual
greyness wrapped earth and sky. I heard people say in the streets, and I
am aware that the same words came to my own lips: 'If it were not full
summer, I should say it was going to snow.' We have much snow in the
Haute Bourgogne, and we are well acquainted with this aspect of the
skies. Of the depressing effect which this greyness exercised upon
myself personally, greyness exercised upon myself personally, I will not
speak. I have always been noted as a man of fine perceptions, and I was
aware instinctively that such a state of the atmosphere must mean
something more than was apparent on the surface. But, as the danger was
of an entirely unprecedented character, it is not to be wondered at that
I should be completely at a loss to divine what its meaning was. It was
a blight some people said; and many were of opinion that it was caused
by clouds of animalculae coming, as is described in ancient writings, to
destroy the crops, and even to affect the health of the population. The
doctors scoffed at this; but they talked about malaria, which, as far as
I could understand, was likely to produce exactly the same effect. The
night closed in early as the day had dawned late; the lamps were lighted
before six o'clock, and daylight had only begun about ten! Figure to
yourself, a July day! There ought to have been a moon almost at the
full; but no moon was visible, no stars--nothing but a grey veil of
clouds, growing darker and darker as the moments went on; such I have
heard are the days and the nights in England, where the seafogs so often
blot out the sky. But we are unacquainted with anything of the kind in
our _plaisant pays de France_. There was nothing else talked of in Semur
all that night, as may well be imagined. My own mind was extremely
uneasy. Do what I would, I could not deliver myself from a sense of
something dreadful in the air which was neither malaria nor animalculae,
I took a promenade through the streets that evening, accompanied by M.
Barbou, my _adjoint_, to make sur