The Future—Cécile Is in Love But Will Not Stay the Night

Below the Auberge, down the steep hill to the bottom of the Valley, was the village of Saint-Pierre-de-Chartreuse. I went down there almost every day for razor blades or toothpaste or for the three-day-old Paris papers. . . . The village was hardly more than a single street from which courtyards opened between the clustering stone houses with brightly painted balconies and window shutters. The predominant colors were stone grey and ochre yellow, with brown slate roofs, steeply sloping, so that the snow would slide off. Yellow also dominated the gardens, set off by shades of scarlet among the dahlias, geraniums, zinnias. ... There were chicken coops in shady corners of the courtyards. Narrow stairways led up to some of the balconies, with old peasant women sunning themselves on the lowest steps.