Brigadier Frederick and The Dean's Watch by Erckmann-Chatrian

Thus all our joys, all our satisfactions passed away, one after the other. The old house to which I formerly returned, laughing from afar, only to see its little windows glittering in the sun and its little chimney smoking between the tops of the fir trees, was then sad and desolate. The winter appeared very long to us. The fire which sparkles so joyously on the hearth when the white flowers of the frost cover the panes, and when silence reigns in the valley, that fire which I had so often gazed at for half an hour at a time while smoking my pipe, thinking of a thousand things that passed through my head, now gave me none but melancholy thoughts.

The fagots wept; poor Ragot sought in every corner, he wandered up stairs and down and smelt under all the doors; Calas wove baskets in silence, the oziers piled in front of him; grandmother Anne told her beads, and Marie-Rose, very pale and dressed in black, came and went through the house, watching over all and doing everything without noise like her poor mother. As for me, I said nothing; when death has entered anywhere all lamentations that one makes are pure loss. Yes, that winter was long!