“How can you say that?” says Hawthorne. “A masterpiece never comes too late; there are always people who are born after it.”

“Yes, but, don’t you see?” says Herman. “I’m talking selfishly, for me alone. It was utterly essential that one person not die before the book appeared.”

Shortly afterward, he sells Arrowhead, leaves the Berkshires, and goes to live in New York. Then we find out that he’s applied for a position as a customs inspector. It’s now around the year 1857.

•

He died after thirty-four years of total silence. On the morning of September 28, 1891, when the nurse who looks after him in the daytime arrives, the night nurse says to her, “Don’t take your shoes off, Mrs. Fourque, he died some hours ago.”

“So that’s that, then, Mrs. Andirons,” she says. “It just so happens I have another old gentleman who’ll probably pass away this morning too. I’d best be hurrying along, lest I be late for both of them.”

“Have a bite to eat, Mrs. Fourque. I’ve washed him, and the carpenter has been advised. Come now, we have a few minutes of peace.”

“How did he make out, then?”

“Around six o’clock, I could tell it was coming. He was talking to himself. I asked him to explain: ‘What are you saying?’ He was asking whether we’d received anything from England. I said, ‘No, Mr. Melville, no, we haven’t received anything, don’t fret, sleep peacefully.’ ”

TRANSLATOR’S ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It was Edmund White who first urged me to read Pour saluer Melville, a book he described as “mad, completely mad” (in the best sense of the word!). Now Edmund has graced the present volume with his introduction. Edwin Frank commissioned me, with generous enthusiasm, to undertake the translation. Susan Barba has proven, once again, to be a most sensitive and sure-handed editor.

Isabelle Génin, of the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, gave me invaluable support from start to finish. She carefully annotated my drafts, helping me to navigate the shifting currents in Giono’s language and thought. Along the way, she saved me from more than a handful of egregious errors. On numerous occasions, I posed thorny puzzles to Jacques Le Gall, a consummate Giono scholar. Jacques always gave me helpful advice, even when the passage in question defied definitive interpretation. As president of the Association des Amis de Jean Giono, Jacques Mény continued his unflagging efforts to promote awareness of Giono in the English-speaking world.

In Canada and the U.S., many friends have read and commented on my drafts. I owe each of them a debt of gratitude: Wendell Block, David Friend, Jennifer Levine, Banuta Rubess, Catherine Bush, David Wallace, Roo Borson, and Joyce Zonana.

As he did for Hill, my friend Claude Boutterin has created a marvelous, magical image for the frontispiece.

To my closest reader, Debbie Honickman, I dedicate this labor of love.

—P. E.