The melancholy that penetrates deep into the soul is always more intense on the dreary nights of the Christmas season. Those nights seem endless for one who stares into the fire with generously lashed eyes warmed by tears. It is not worth crying as the fire slowly burns until only the embers seem alive. The cold, damp wind that left the fields moist in this springtime is not the same one that will soon blow dry leaves around empty streets. No one around here dares defy Him who manipulates with tenacious accuracy these strange climatic metamorphoses, nor will anyone insinuate that the apocalyptic elements are sustained only by prophetic words resounding beyond the mountaintops.