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tension, you couldn’t have said how matters would be resolved.
    Finally Marcelot, who didn’t expect such a reaction, cleared his throat and looked at the father a touch more insistently. This was a signal for the thaw, and everyone began talking in a feverish jumble of words.
    â€œEleven summers we’ve had these golden harvests,” said the mayor.
    â€œSnow always comes just at the right time and we’ve been showered with game!” exclaimed Jeannot.
    And it was true that the forests in the lowlands were the richest in the region for game, so much so that we had trouble keeping the forests to ourselves, because the folk in neighboring regions, deprived of similar bounty, came here regularly to alleviate their frustration.
    â€œAnd aren’t the orchards lovely,” added Eugénie, “with peaches and pears like in heaven!”
    At which point she glanced nervously at the priest, but that was indeed how she imagined the garden of Eden, with golden peaches as velvety as the kiss of an innocent being, and pears so juicy that when you cooked them you’d only think to add wine out of a guilty weakness (the true sin of the matter). But the priest was otherwise preoccupied than with the aspect of peaches in paradise according to some old granny, who in any case was so pious that she could have imagined peaches that were blue or gifted with speech and it would have been all the same to him. He saw above all that his flock were still in possession of arguments that tended quite frankly toward magic. And yet he was troubled. He may have been a country priest, but he was unusually cultivated for a man of such modest function. He had a passion for tales of exploration, and he could often be found sobbing under his lamp as he read of the suffering endured by his brothers who had gone to spread the word of God in the Americas. But his greatest passion was medicinal and aromatic plants, and every evening, in his fine seminarian’s handwriting, he would note down his observations about desiccation or the therapeutic use of simples, on the subject of which he owned an impressive collection of precious engravings and erudite tomes.
    This culture of his, because he was good, and full of good intentions and curiosity, meant he was a man who was capable of doubt, who did not approach every unusual event with a brandishing of his missal but displayed, instead, reasoned circumspection. And when it came to the prosperity of the lowlands over these eleven years, he had to admit that it was fact, and more than just fact, it was enchantment. One need only stroll down any of the region’s by-ways to see how fine the trees were, how well-tilled the soil, how plentiful the insects as they worked to gather and spread the pollen; and there were ever more dragonflies for Maria to watch in summer, dense vibrant swarms of the sort you would see nowhere else: because this cloud of blessings, this surfeit of amber fruit and superb harvests was concentrated in the village and along its pathways and in its communal woods, and it clearly came to an end at an invisible border that was more tangible to the inhabitants in these parts than any drawn up in a grand European treaty.
    That evening they recalled a spring morning two years earlier when everyone emerged onto their front steps and cried out in astonishment and delight at the sight of a huge carpet of violets that adorned the fields and banks with its gossamer drapery; or of one dawn hunt some four winters earlier when the men went out into the frosty air with their thick scarves and their caps with ear-flaps, and were amazed to find the streets of the village packed solid with hares all bound for the woods. It had only happened the one time, but what a time it was! The men had followed the hares to the woods, and no one would have dreamt of firing at them along the way, and then the animals had scattered and the hunt had begun in the normal fashion. But it was