The poplar trees that bordered it were almost bare, the rains and winds of this most dreadful year had dismantled them already. They were tall slim candles, tipped with yellow flame. They were candles lit in sunshine, too early, before candle-light time. Autumn was come too soon. The vines had failed. And yet no one had ever seen the colour of the vines so beautiful. The road climbs up and up through the vineyards. The house stands on a ridge, among chestnut trees that were turned already golden and brown, high against the high wall of the mountains. The mountains were of the colours of the vintage, purple and topaz and red. The clouds made snow peaks high behind the mountains. The house has a heap of steep, old, uneven blue-tiled roofs. Its walls are as yellow as the corn. There is a long terrace before it, with a stone balustrade, worn and soft, and a pigeon tower at one end of the terrace, and the tower of a great dark yew tree at the other end. I thought what a withdrawn little place it was, held quite apart, like a thing treasured and feared for. The road passes under the pigeon-tower end of the terrace, and round into a courtyard that the farm and service houses close in on two sides. The courtyard smelled of clover and of cows. Multitudes of white pigeons fluttered about the old thatched roofs of the grange, where the hay was stored in the gable, and corn hung drying in golden festoons, and the dust of the threshing floor was deeply fragrant. The wine vats smelled of grapes. And odours of lavender and wild thyme came close down from the mountain side. The entrance door stood open, across the grass and cobbles of the court, to whosoever might trouble to go in. There was a great chestnut tree on either side of the door, and the ground about the door was strewn with brown burrs and golden leaves. A little old peasant woman, who must surely have been the Nounou long ago, came to the door, in sabots and the white stiff winged cap of the country. She said that Madame had gone down to the black wheat fields. The waxed, black, shining stairs came straight down into the red-tiled hall. Across the hall there was a fine carved and painted room, that lay all along the length of the terrace. That room was closed because of the war. "Madame had it closed," explained the little old nurse, "since the day when Monsieur Xaxa went." In the dining-room there was a big table pushed back to the wall, with many chairs crowded out of the way against it. The old nurse said, "We do not use this room, now that Monsieur Xaxa is gone." She would show us the kitchen with its red-brick tiles, and dark, great beams, and earthen jars and coppers, and its old stone hearth, like an altar. She said, "Nothing is kept as beautifully as it should be. Madame and I are quite alone."