My family is spread over the entire province-an extensive network of Erards, Chapelains, Benoits, Montrifauts; they are important farmers, lawyers, government officials, landowners. Their houses are imposing and isolated, built far from the villages and protected by great forbidding doors with triple locks, like the doors you find in prisons. Their flat gardens contain almost no flowers, nothing but vegetables and fruit trees trained to produce the best yield. Their sitting rooms are stuffed full of furniture and always shut up; they live in the kitchen to save money on firewood. I'm not talking about Francois and Helene Erard, of course; I have never been in a home more pleasant, welcoming, intimate, warm and happy than theirs. But, in spite of everything, my idea of the perfect evening is this: I am completely alone; my housekeeper has just put the hens in their coop and gone home, and I am left with my pipe, my dog nestled between my legs, the sound of the mice in the attic, a crackling fire, no newspapers, no books, a bottle of red wine warming slowly on the hearth. "Why do people call you Silvio?" asked Colette.

"A beautiful woman who was once in love with me thought I looked like a gondolier," I replied. "That was over twenty years ago and, at the time, I had black hair and a handlebar moustache. She changed my name from Sylvestre to Silvio."

"But you look like a faun," said Colette, "with your wide forehead, turned-up nose, pointed ears and laughing eyes. Sylvestre, creature of the woods. That suits you very well." Of all of Helene 's children, Colette is my favourite. She isn't beautiful, but she has the quality that, when I was young, I used to value most in women: she has fire. Her eyes laugh like mine and her large mouth too; her hair is black and fine, peeping out in delicate curls from behind the shawl, which she has pulled over her head to keep the draught from her neck. People say she looks like the young Helene. But I can't remember. Since the birth of a third son, little Loulou, who's nine years old now, Helene has put on weight and the woman of forty-eight, whose soft skin has lost its bloom, obscures my memory of the Helene I knew when she was twenty. She looks calm and happy now.

This gathering at my house was arranged to introduce Colette's fiance to me. His name is Jean Dorin, one of the Dorins from the Moulin-Neuf, who've been millers for generations. A beautiful river, frothy and green, runs past their mill. I used to go trout fishing there when Dorin's father was still alive.

"You'll make us some good fish dishes, Colette," I said. Francois refused a glass of punch: he drinks only water. He has a pointy little grey beard that he slowly strokes.

"You won't miss the pleasures of this world when you've left it," I remarked to him, "or rather once it has left you, as it has me . . ."

For I sometimes feel I've been rejected by life, as if washed ashore by the tide. I've ended up on a lonely beach, an old boat, still solid and seaworthy, but whose paint has faded in the water, eaten away by salt.

"No, since you don't like wine, hunting or women, you'll have nothing to miss."

"I'd miss my wife," he replied, smiling.

That was when Colette went and sat next to her mother.

"Mama, tell me the story of how you got engaged to Papa," she said. "You've never said anything about it. Why's that? I know it's a very romantic story, that you loved each other for a long time ... Why haven't you ever told me about it?"

"You've never asked."

"Well, I'm asking now."

Helene laughed. "It's none of your business," she protested.

"You don't want to say because you're embarrassed. But it can't be because of Uncle Silvio: he must know all about it.