A good time for redemption

"Please be spring.  If nothing else, that.  The trees at the entrances to the Métro, where warm air vented from down below, always bloomed first.  Yes, said the newspapers, it had been the coldest winter in a hundred years.  Privately, more than one person in Paris—and in Prague and in Warsaw and in Copenhagen—thought that God had punished Europe for setting itself on fire, for murdering the innocent, for evil.  But then too there was, particularly in that scheme of things, redemption.  And now would be a good time for it.  The wind still blew, getting out of bed in the morning still hurt, the skin stayed rough and cracked, but the winter was breaking apart, collapsing, exhausted by its valiant effort to kill every last one of them."  (The World at Night, by Alan Furst)