Fiction. Translated from the French by Samuel Martin. The air becomes stifling. Lightning crashes. We're by the windows, watching the spectacle of the storm... A thick curtain of rain beats down on the flatlands; it advances on us rapidly, and hides the bottom of the garden altogether. The drumming of the rain, the flashes of lightning and the cracks of thunder are joined by a succession of muffled sounds. Mother says it's hail, but on the meadow and the gravel path we can see small objects falling; they aren't hailstones, more like soft oblong things the size of plums or eyes. You might also call them bubbles. They pile up, quivering, but don't burst.