“Her mother and the other sister have remained all alone on the mountain, and this is a great pity, because they are not equal to the work on their hands and every year the undergrowth creeps in and swallows up a little more.
“Farms like that need strong arms. They have been taken by force from the mountain and the mountain lies in wait all the time to take them back.
“My great-grandfather saw the time when Sauveplane was only a sheepfold and a waste. The Rouxs and the Trézics made a good property of it, and in the middle of the last century it was almost a village, with three farms, several barns, a spring, and reservoirs. On its threshing-floor they threshed more wheat than was needed for three families. They brought down cheeses, butter, and chestnuts: during the winter they made sabots, collars, and little bells for the sheep. They married and children were born there.
“Now it is poverty-stricken. Of the three families there remains only an old woman and one unmarried girl. The reservoirs have filled up with mud, the ploughed lands have become as hard as stone, the chestnut-trees that have died have not been replaced, and the great farm itself, the one they called in my father’s time ‘l’Oustau Nou,’7 has begun to decay.
“You can climb up to Sauveplane and see the desolation of that valley! The wild places on the mountain that have never been tilled are not melancholy: solitude is natural to them. But abandoned fields, where one sees the old traces of cultivation, are a sorrier sight than the cemeteries. …”
“You have told enough of this story,” resumed Finiels’s wife. “It is supper-time. I am going to set the table, but you had better go and take a turn on the terrace and let me sweep up. You have brought in all the mud of the Méjean farm on your gaiters. …”
We all rose. Finiels’s son and the two boys from Bessède went ahead.
“I am going to see the dogs. … Bombarde has hurt her paw, going through the brambles.”
The mayor and Panard went out also. I remained alone in the room with Finiels: we went slowly toward the door. The evening sky seemed to rest on the rim of the terrace, the fog rose toward it from the neighbouring slopes. Bombarde whimpered softly from the barn.
I understood that Roux’s story was finished, that Finiels had nothing more to say and did not wish to say anything more. But if, when he began his story, I was content to imagine the physical appearance of his hero, I now desired to know exactly how his face looked and what was his bearing.
“I must have known this Roux of Sauveplane before the war, but I can’t recall him. …”
“He was a man much like everybody else: in person a little like my boy, a little like the boys from Bessède. Not too tall, but slightly stooped. … He wore a moustache, but no beard, at least before the war, for while he was in hiding he allowed his hair to grow all over, as I have told you. … But this beard was of no importance, for his eyes made up his whole face: great blue eyes with a kind of sadness in them. … His face was long and a little pointed, and his cheeks seemed to meet at the chin, which gave him an attentive air, as if he were always listening to something. …
“How is he now? I cannot tell you, but it is certain that in twenty years he will be an old man, like me, with arms too long and legs a little bent. …”
Looking at Finiels, I complete this description, and without effort phrases are born in me that add themselves to his phrases and seem to compose a portrait full of proud justice:
These arms, too long from having held too many short-handled tools, these legs bent from having walked on both sides of the furrows and over rough land, and especially this face where the striking, the essential thing is the line of the hair, straight and black and parallel with the line of the eyebrows, and which seems to express a tenacious rectitude, an integrity that knows no compromise.
3I love you a little, my own, but not much, I love you a little, my own, a little but not much; I do not love you more, because I have known [your] abuse.
4“Marshy land, mire; rich, damp soil.”—Mistral, Lou Tresor dou Felibrige.
5Dam, dike, causeway for raising water. In langue d’oc “pansiero.”
6When the Cap de Coste puts on its cap, the shepherd can put on his cloak.
7The New House.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
André Chamson (1900–1983) was an archivist, museum curator, novelist, and essayist. He was the founder-director of the journal Vendredi. After World War II, he was a curator at the Musée du Petit Palais and director of the Archives de France. Chamson was president of PEN International, the worldwide association of writers, from 1956 to 1959. In 1956, he was elected to the Académie française. Chamson set most of his stories in the Cévennes, where he was born.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1938 by André Chason
Introduction copyright © 2016 by Lawrence Brown
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