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Rhône valley, west of the Rhône Alps, east of the Ardèche. Lyons lies behind us, and the Saône. The temperature gauge is singing like a canary; the clear light of the Mediterranean is filling the dry green basins ofMontélimar. It is five o’clock. We are searching for the establishment where we are to spend the night, the house of a man named Bertrand. Bertrand’s domain is at once more outré , more esoteric, and more aesthetically confounding than Monsieur’s. It takes a long time to find it; and when we do it is as thick in its own enchanted slumber as Sleeping Beauty’s castle.
    There are strange pelted hills that rise like a dromedary’s humps from the plain. We wind around them, asking directions of everyone we see. The hills are fragrant, forested with brittle chestnut trees and herbs and carpeted with twigs and dried leaves that crackle underfoot. At the very end of a narrow road that twirls abstractedly upwards through the wilderness and is then extinguished, we find a potholed track traversing the hillside. At the end of that is a very high stone wall with a pair of giant doors in it that are resolutely closed. There is no doorbell or knocker; there isn’t another house for miles around either. But our directions were increasingly clear; there can be no mistake: we are certain Bertrand is in there somewhere.
    Presently we try one of the doors and its great iron handle turns, admitting us into a large stone courtyard. The courtyard is completely enclosed: the wildly forested hillside grows up all around its perimeter. Yet inside it is spacious, orderly, well tended. There are no weeds in the borders: the flowers spill from their stone urns by intention, not neglect. They have recently been watered: bright beads still tremble on their petals. Yet everything is silent: there is no one here. In fairy tales, such places are the deepest emanations of magic: the castle in its forest of thorns, the mountain room unlocked by a keyhole in the ice, the lake with its pleasure boats that lies beneath the floorboards. It is in the elision of the human hand that the magic expresses itself. A fire burns with no one to stoke it; a meal stands hot on the table in an empty house. Here, there is a room, not inside but out: it stands in the right angle of the courtyard, two sides of which, I now see, are formed by an old house. It has a large low roof supported by apillar on its far corner. Under it there are beautiful rugs, and an arrangement of furniture. There are two long sofas, an armchair, a baroque standard lamp, a mahogany coffee table, a bookshelf, and a parrot in a cage hanging from the rafters. We cross to the front door and ring the bell, which unexpectedly makes the noise of a croaking frog. Then we sit down on the sofas: they are extremely comfortable. Ten minutes pass, perhaps more. At last the door quietly opens and a man slips out of the shadows of the house and into the sun. This is Bertrand. A squat little dog with a bunched-up face like a boxer’s fist slowly follows him. Bertrand greets us with quiet sincerity. He is sorry he took so long to come: he was asleep.
    Like Monsieur, Bertrand is in his late fifties, or perhaps a little older; and like Monsieur he appears to operate alone. He wears the same outfit of canvas shorts and scuffed deck shoes. But he has something delicate and hopeful about him, something of the choirboy or cherub; something childlike, with his full curving mouth and large tremulous eyes and soft fine white curling hair, with his inconvenient afternoon nap. An enormous white cat has followed the little dog out into the courtyard. These are Pollux and Nestor. Bertrand excuses himself: he must make a small adjustment to our rooms. One of the beds he has made up for the children will be, he now sees, too small. He must aménager . We will do him the kindness of waiting.
    My tutored female soul is alerted by the prospect of Bertrand, white-haired and eminent as he seems, aménaging alone.