When I return home at dusk he's still there; he hasn't budged; he's been thinking about what he owns; he's happy. His young wife never comes near my land. I had been eager to see her and had tried to find out about her from Jean Dorin.

"Do you know her, then?" he asked. "We're neighbours and her husband is one of my clients. I'll invite them to the wedding and we'll be obliged to see them socially, but I don't want her getting friendly with Colette. I don't like her behaviour when it comes to men."

When the young woman came in, Helene was standing not far from me. She was nervous and tired. The meal was over. A hundred people had been served lunch at tables arranged on a special wooden floor brought in from Moulins for the dance and set up under a marquee. It wasn't too cold out, the weather damp but fine. Every now and again, one of the canvas tent flaps would fly up and you could see the Erards' large garden, the bare trees, the pond covered in dead leaves. At five o'clock the tables were taken away and the dancing began. Some more guests arrived; they were the youngest, the ones more interested in dancing than food; it's rare to have any entertainment in these parts. Brigitte Declos was among them, but she didn't seem to know anyone very well. She was alone. Helene shook her hand, as she did with everyone; but for a moment her lips tightened into a weak, brave smile-the kind that women use to hide their most secret thoughts.

The older people made way for the youngsters in the improvised ballroom and went into the house. We sat in a circle around the large fireplaces; it was stiflingly hot in those stuffy rooms; we drank grenadine and punch. The men talked about the harvest, the farms rented out to tenants, the price of cattle. When older people get together there is something unflappable about them; you can sense they've tasted all the heavy, bitter, spicy food of life, extracted its poisons, and will now spend ten or fifteen years in a state of perfect equilibrium and enviable morality. They are happy with themselves. They have renounced the vain attempts of youth to adapt the world to their desires. They have failed and, now, they can relax. In a few years they will once again be troubled by great anxiety, but this time it will be a fear of death; it will have a strange effect on their tastes, it will make them indifferent, or eccentric, or moody, incomprehensible to their families, strangers to their children. But between the ages of forty and sixty they enjoy a precarious sense of tranquillity.

I felt this all the more strongly after such a good meal and excellent wine, thinking back to the past and the cruel enemy who made me run away from this place. I tried being a civil servant in the Congo, a merchant in Tahiti, a trapper in Canada. Nothing made me happy. I thought I was seeking my fortune; in reality I was being propelled forward by the fire in my young blood. But as these passions are now extinguished I no longer know who I am. I feel I've travelled a long, pointless road, simply to end up where I began. The only thing I am truly happy about is that I never married.