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lot.
    "It doesn't matter," he concluded. "I'm used to suffering."
    It's true: the people around here have a kind of genius for living in the most difficult way possible. No matter how rich they are, they refuse pleasure, even happiness, with implacable determination, wary perhaps of its deceptive promise. To the best of my knowledge, the only time old Declos broke this rule was the day he married Brigitte, and he must have regretted it. So he is putting his affairs in order and preparing to die at Christmas. His wife will inherit everything, there's no doubt about that. Even if he knows she's cheating on him, he'll make very sure to behave in such a way that no one else suspects her adultery. It's both a matter of pride and loyalty to the family; a kind of solidarity that ties husband and wife, father and son. In order to avoid scandal, to make sure no one knows anything, all hatreds are hidden. It's not that they seek approval: they're too primitive for that and too proud. What they fear most of all is that others might know their business. To feel judgemental eyes upon them is unbearable suffering. That's what makes them incapable of vanity: they do not wish to be envied any more than they wish others to feel sorry for them. They just want to be left in peace. Peace, that's how they put it. To them, peace is synonymous with happiness, or rather, it replaces the happiness they lack.
    I heard an old woman talking to Helene about Colette and the accident that left her a widow: "It's a shame, a rea l s hame . . . Your daughter was at peace at the mill." And that word symbolised everything she could possibly imagine about human happiness.
    Old Declos as well, he wants everything to be peaceful during his last days on earth, and after he's gone too.
    AUTUMN HAS COME EARLY. I get up before dawn and walk through the countryside, between the fields tha t b elonged to my family for generations, which are now owned and cultivated by others. I can't say the idea is painful to me; I have just a little twinge of sadness sometimes . . . I don't regret the time I lost trying to make my fortune, the time I bought horses in Canada, or sold cocoa beans on the Pacific coast. The need to travel, the suffocating boredom I felt in this place when I was twenty, burned within me so strongly that I think I would have died if I'd been forced to stay. My father had passed away and my mother couldn't hold me back. "It's like an illness," she said, horrified, when I begged her to give me some money and let me go. "Wait a bit and it will pass." Or "You're acting just like the Gonin boy and the Charles boy. They want to go and work in town even though they know they won't be as happy as they are here. But when I try to reason with them, all they say is 'It will make a change.' "
    In fact, that was exactly what I wanted: a change. My blood burned at the thought of the vast world that existed, while I simply remained here. So I left, and now I cannot understand the demon that drove me far from my home, I who am so unsociable and sedentary. I remember how Colette Dorin once told me I resembled a faun: an old faun, now, who has stopped chasing after nymphs and who huddles near the fireplace. And how can I describe the pleasure I find here? I enjoy simple things, things within reach: a nice meal, some good wine, the secret, bitter pleasure of writing in this notebook; but, most especially, this divine solitude. What else do I need? But when I was twenty, how I burned! How is this fire lit within us? It devours everything and then, in a few years, a few months, a few hours even, it burns itself out. Then you see how much damage has been done. You find yourself tied to a woman you don't love any more, or ruined, like me. Perhaps, born to be a grocer, you struggle to become a painter in Paris and end up in a hospital. Who hasn't had his life strangely warped and distorted by that fire so opposite to his true nature? Are we not all somewhat like these branches