December in Paris

From Adam Gopnick's wonderful book Paris to the Moon:

"The hardest thing to convey is how lovely it all is and how that loveliness seems all you need. In that moment on a December at four o'clock when you're walking from the bus stop to the rue Saint-Dominique... you feel as if you've escaped your ghosts if only because, being you, they're transfixed looking at the lights in the trees on the other bank, too, which they haven't seen before, either."