“Dawn awakens minds as it does the birds; all began to talk.”—Victor Hugo, Les Miserables
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“Let us narrate what was passing in Marius’ thoughts.
Let the reader recall the state of his soul. We have just recalled it, everything was a vision to him now…”
He ended morning’s read upon the barricade. He did not want to think of war and desired to read no more. His heart was heavy, morose.
Outside in the night came first hard frost and in the morning dead would be all of annual’s green, brightness of life darkened; life-sheen matted and drab, downturned and heavy leaves that soon would fall away or bring supporting stem to earth in death as well.
Had dawn been clear and stars shone clear, perhaps his visions would be different; but at his mind heart so often tied with spirit of world and weather—innate sense and mood of the agrarian—he was depressed and something shattered, or died away, in the kill of first-frost’s ending.
He did not want to be there, not that day, not that dawn; a dawn that didn’t show.
He dreamed of the city of story, not as it was in the story read, but in a different way: romance and wanderings, lost in city of white stone and clay and copper roofs, bridges over the Siene and lamps that lit their way, gardens immaculate in cultivation and colors that adorned in all but winter’s season; of lover’s kisses in urban enclaves, unseen, and those given freely in outward open. Who cared?
It was Paris: a moveable feast and city forever for lover’s hearts.
He dreamed of there, of day and place he’d yet to live but imagined still—one day.
He dreamed and believed the romance, a city he’d never seen; and to ideal, his spirit changed.
Rising, he went to her still in sleep; her hair and countenance of face-expression the only rays, warmth, and sight of sun present in then world. To romance of ideal—white-stone city of clay and copper tops, of bridges over Seine and lamps that lit the way; of kisses, both stolen and given freely in the light—he awakened her into a lover’s dawn.