Proust on Warm Weather

"I remember the warm weather we were then having, when a drop of sweat would fall vertically, regularly, intermittently from the brow of the farm boys working in the sun, like the drip from a cistern, alternating with the fall of the ripe fruit coming away from the tree in the neighboring "close"; they have remained, still today, together with this mystery of a woman concealed, the most constant element in any love that is offered to me. I will break all my week's engagements to get to know a woman I have been told about but to whom I would not give a moment's thought, if it is a week when the weather is of this kind, and if I am to meet her at some isolated farmhouse. For all my knowing that weather and an assignation of this sort are not from her, they are the bait, familiar to me though it is, that I allow myself to take and which is enough to hook me. I know that in cold weather, in a town, I might have desired this woman, but without the accompaniment of any romantic feelings, without falling in love; the love is no less strong once, the circumstances being what they are, it has enslaved me; it is simply more melancholy, as our feelings for people become in life the more we perceive the increasingly small part they are playing and that the new love, which we would wish to be so enduring, and to be cut short at the same time as our life itself, will be the last."

Sodom and Gomorrah, translated by John Sturrock

And I know everyone obsesses about that madeleine, but I'd have to say that orangeade is featured far more often! So go find yourself a bottle of sparkling French orangeade and an isolated farm house and enjoy the heat.