There are some V.’s farther along, if you climb up to the Menet pass (the road takes you through masses of greenery in the midst of which you can make out more than a hundred huge or very beautiful beech trees, but none comparable to the beech near Frédéric’s sawmill), if you go down the Diois hillside, well, yes, there you’ll find some V.’s. The third farm to the right of the road, in the meadows, has a fountain with a spout made from two interlocking roof tiles; there are hollyhocks in a small parish garden and, if it’s summer, or even Easter vacation (but then there could still be frost in the vicinity), you might be able to see, sitting at the foot of the hollyhocks, a young man, very dark, thin, with a sprinkling of beard, all tending to exaggerate the size of his eyes, which are already very wide and lost in thought. Usually (well, when I saw him), he reads; he was reading Gérard de Nerval’s Sylvie. He’s a V. He is (well, he was) at the école normale in Valence, or was it Grenoble? And reading Sylvie in that spot is quite odd. You cross under that pass through a tunnel about as “passable” as the former gallery of an abandoned mine, and the Diois hillside on which you emerge up there is a chaotic mix of monstrous whale-blue waves and black jet sprays spurting pine trees onto I don’t know what—an ugly, pinkish rock face, or one that is an insidious gray like the shells of large mollusks; well, the terrestrial equivalent of immense, colliding dark bodies of water that in the midst of a churning cyclone reveal an immeasurable depth. This is why I said that Sylvie, in such a spot, is rather odd because not only is the farm, called the Chirouzes, extremely isolated but its curved walls, its roof, and the way its doors and windows are hidden among huge flying buttresses all make it clear that it is afraid. There are no trees around. All the farm can do is hide in the ground and it’s plain to see that it’s doing just that with all its might: the pastureland behind is higher than the roof. The parish garden is there, just off to the side, fenced in by wire, I believe, and the hollyhocks are there, who knows why, and V. (Amédée), the son, is there, in front of it all. He’s reading Sylvie, by Gérard de Nerval. He was reading Sylvie by Gérard de Nerval when I saw him. I didn’t see his father or mother; I don’t know if he has brothers or sisters; all I know is that he’s a V., that he’s studying at the école normale in Valence or Grenoble, and that he comes back home during school holidays.