ut upon the beds,
spread throughout a house the sunshiny cheerfulness of Sunday.

The laboring men, the people who work with their hands, alone know the
joy that comes with the end of each week, consecrated by the custom of a
nation. For those people, prisoners throughout the week, the crowded
lines of the almanac open at equal intervals in luminous spaces, in
refreshing whiffs of air. Sunday, the day that seems so long to worldly
people, to the Parisians of the boulevard, whose fixed habits it
deranges, and so melancholy to exiles without a family, is the day which
constitutes to a multitude of people the only recompense, the only goal
of six days of toil. Neither rain nor hail makes any difference to them;
nothing will prevent them from going out, from closing the door of the
deserted workshop or the stuffy little lodging behind them. But when the
springtime takes a hand, when a May sun is shining as it is shining this
morning and Sunday can array itself in joyous colors, then indeed it is
the holiday of holidays.

If you would appreciate it to the full, you must see it in the laboring
quarters, in those dismal streets which it illumines, which it makes
broader by closing the shops, housing the great vans, leaving the space
free for the romping of children with clean faces and in their best
clothes, and games of battledore mingled with circling flocks of
swallows under some porch in old Paris. You must see it in the swarming,
fever-stricken faubourgs where from early morning you feel it hovering,
soothing and grateful, over the silent factories, passing with the clang
of bells and the shrill whistle of the locomotives, which give the
impression of a mighty hymn of departure and deliverance arising from
all the suburbs. Then you appreciate it and love it.

O thou Parisian Sunday, Sunday of the working man and the humble, I have
often cursed thee without reason, I have poured out floods of abusive
ink upon thy noisy, effervescent joy, the dusty railway stations filled
with thy uproar, and the lumbering omnibuses which thou takest by
assault, upon thy wine-shop ballads roared forth in spring-carts
bedecked with green and pink dresses, thy barrel-organs wheezing under
balconies in deserted court-yards; but to-day, renouncing my errors, I
exalt thee and bless thee for all the joy and relief thou bringest to
courageous, honorable toil, for the laughter of the children who acclaim
thee, for the pride of happy mothers dress