The sun comes and goes, and it is wise to take an umbrella. When there is sun it pours into the kitchen all morning and it's hard to go and get any work done. The clouds are magnificent, and ominous.

Yesterday I walked, almost ran, because I kept getting turned around and was afraid of being late, over towards the Invalides to meet a friend for lunch in a tea room, "Les Deux Abeilles," behind the Quai Branly museum, where she had been guiding some architects around the building all morning. We had a lot of catching up to do. We used to live across the street from one another.

And the day before yesterday I ended up in the southwest corner of the Luxembourg Garden, my usual spot by the orchard, near the sequoia. It was 5 pm or so, rain threatened, but I had a book to read, and there were people to watch and eavesdrop on, and a deep comfortable chair to sit on (on a nicer day they would have all been taken) and another straight chair to put my feet up on; and then all of a sudden, out of the corner of my eye, I saw an older man strike out across the lawn, which is strictly forbidden, and then a few seconds later, his wife came running after him, to bring him back to the gravel path. I looked around for the park guard--there is always one with a whistle nearby--and just as the wife caught up with her husband and put her hand on his shoulder and turned him back, the whistle blew, not too sharply, and the guard pursued them a few steps over the lawn, and then she stopped, and watched them--old Adam and Eve; and turned her attention to a pair of kids with a frisbee instead.

I think I've said before, other years, that I like these calm green swaths of lawn, like ponds, to look at. I like them better than if they were crowded with people, as would be the case in Canada or the U.S.--maybe in Britain too? They are peaceful, the emptiness, the shadows, the odd leaf, the flowers, are calm.