Letters From My Windmill Read Online Free PDF

the coming daylight. As for me, I watched her
sleeping, being somewhat troubled in my soul, but that clear night,
which had only ever given me beautiful thoughts, had kept me in an
innocent frame of mind. The stars all around us continued their
stately, silent journey like a great docile flock in the sky. At times,
I imagined that one of these stars, the finest one, the most brilliant,
having lost its way, had come to settle, gently, on my shoulder, to
sleep….

THE ARLESIENNE
    As you go down to the village from the windmill, the road passes a farm
situated behind a large courtyard planted with tall Mediterranean
nettle trees. It's a typical house of a Provencal tenant farmer with
its red tiles, large brown façade, and haphazardly placed doors and
windows. It has a weather-cock right on top of the loft, and a pulley
to hoist hay, with a few tufts of old hay sticking out….
    What was it about this particular house that struck me? Why did the
closed gate freeze my blood? I don't know; but I do know that the house
gave me the shivers. It was choked by an eerie silence. No dogs barked.
Guinea fowl scattered silently. Nothing was heard from inside the
grounds, not even the ubiquitous mule's bell…. Were it not for white
curtains at the windows and smoke rising from the roof, the place could
have been deserted.
    Yesterday, around midday, I was walking back from the village, by the
walls of the farm in the shade of the old nettle trees, when I saw some
farm-hands quietly finishing loading a hay wain on the road in front of
the farm. The gate had been left open and discovered a tall,
white-haired, old man at the back of the yard, with his elbows on a
large stone table, and his head in his hands. He was wearing an
ill-fitting jacket and tattered trousers…. The sight of him stopped
me in my tracks. One of the men whispered, almost inaudibly, to me:
    —Sush. It's the Master. He's been like that since his son's death.
    At that moment a woman and a small boy, both dressed in black and
accompanied by fat and sun-tanned villagers, passed near us and went
into the farm.
    The man went on:
    —… The lady and the youngest, Cadet, are coming back from the mass.
Every day it's the same thing since the eldest killed himself. Oh,
monsieur, what a tragedy. The father still goes round in his mourning
weeds, nothing will stop him…. Gee-up!
    The wagon lurched ready to go, but I still wanted to know more, so I
asked the driver if I could sit with him, and it was up there in the
hay, that I learned all about the tragic story of young Jan.
    * * * * *
    Jan was an admirable countryman of twenty, as well-behaved as a girl,
well-built and open-hearted. He was very handsome and so caught the eye
of lots of women, but he had eyes for only one—a petite girl from
Arles, velvet and lace vision, whom he had once met in the town's main
square. This wasn't well received at first in the farm. The girl was
known as a flirt, and her parents weren't local people. But Jan wanted
her, whatever the cost. He said:
    —I will die if I don't have her. And so, it just had to be. The
marriage was duly arranged to take place after the harvest.
    One Sunday evening, the family were just finishing dinner in the
courtyard. It was almost a wedding feast. The fiancée was not there,
but her health and well-being were toasted throughout the meal…. A
man appeared unexpectedly at the door, and stuttered a request to speak
to Estève, the master of the house, alone. Estève got up and went out
onto the road.
    —Monsieur, the man said, you are about to marry your boy off to a
woman who is a bitch, and has been my mistress for two years. I have
proof of what I say; here are some of her letters!… Her parents know
all about it and have promised her to me, but since your son took an
interest in her, neither she nor they want anything to do with me….
And yet I would have thought that after what has happened, she couldn't
in all conscience marry anyone else.
    —I see, said