Five o’clock in the afternoon
But no , everything falls away , every one fails me . You see now that I can not do without you . You must not desert me . '' Five o'clock in the afternoon . Rain since morning and a gray sky low enough to be reached with an umbrella ; the close weather which sticks . Mess , mud , nothing but mud , in heavy puddles , in shining trails in the gutters , vainly chased by the street-scrapers and the scavengers , heaved into enormous carts which carry it slowly towards Montreuil -- promenading it in triumph through the streets , always moving , and always springing up again , growing through the pavements , splashing the panels of the carriages , the breasts of the horses , the clothes of the passers-by , spattering the windows , the door-steps , the shop-fronts , till one feared that the whole of Paris would sink and disappear under this sorrowful , miry soil where everything dissolves and is lost in mud . And it moves one to pity to see the invasion of this dirt on the whiteness of the new houses , on the parapets of the quays , and on the colonnades of the stone balconies .