It was indeed the month of desolation.

Every scrap of colour seemed to have faded from the dripping wet landscape.

Phantasmal clouds of grey mist brooded here and there in the hollows.

The distant hills were wreathed in vapour, so that even the green of the pastures was invisible.

Every now and then a snipe started up from one of the weedy places with his shrill, mournful cry, and more than once a solitary hawk hovered for a few minutes above his head.