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Authors: Jean Giono
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backs on the skyâs anger, this solitude, this great voice, the spirit is immediately seized with the noble sadness and the memory of high places.
The grass is of a green gold and, when the wind ruffles it, it discovers its age underneath, as old as the earth. Blue schist, completely bare, creaks under the sun in fits and starts and suddenly cascades down to
the road, making all the echoes ring. Then everything falls still. The torrent of stone stops. The schist creaks. Mallefougasse lives a life which is not vegetable. The trees there have learned to keep quiet. It freely lives the life of earth and stones. Under that light curtain of flesh, blue rocks, clay-pits, quivering eyelids of sand, throbs the interior of the world.
Everything here is religion. There, in the crushed grass, is the litter of the gods!
The little village is made up of four houses lying level with the ground and a barn called âthe lookoutâ because it raises the sly vent of its pulley window over a bank. The other walls are flat and windowless. The stones, unplastered, are eaten away by the wind. The doors have thick bolts, all glistening with oil, which slip into their cylinders like fat black rats, silent and solid. The people from here have that long unwavering look that goes to the core of things, through men, women, the hills, and the depths of the sky.
Thus, everything is ready on this high overhang of the earth to serve as altar and sacrificial stone, and yet, the shepherds have chosen it for other, more simple reasons.
In Crau, of course, the sheep have plenty of room, and then, there they are, in the worst of the heat along the narrow roads, squeezed together, running as one thick body, like water, with no air around them.
And so, they move through the areas where land is valuable, where, on plots the size of postage stamps, you can make money growing leeks, parsley, peaches, apricots, grapes. Just try letting them spread out there! Youâll find a shotgun exploding in your ear. Thus, you go along your flat way from one dust cloud to another, without ever stepping beyond the telegraph poles, with only one desire nevertheless, to
reach the land, yes, the land! The land of leeks, parsley, peach trees, that isnât land anymore. Itâs so mixed with night soil, manure, droppings, and dung that it has become human rottenness, and they can have it! No, the land, the great land, our own, the land that remained after the flood, has dried itself off and there it is, the land where thereâs room for everyone.
And Mallefougasse is it!
Whatâs more, when youâre there, youâre at a point where youâve come more than a hundred kilometers along the way, and you have more than a hundred kilometers left to go. So you have the right to rest. Nothing screams in you if you lie down by the side of the road. Itâs a stopping point, and it suits us just right. Itâs like a great pool. The water of herds fills it at leisure, laps a bit, and then sleeps. But what is most beautiful is the great breadth of it. You donât have to pay attention to this earth like a bit of the night, to the fearful trees, to the free movements of the wind, no, the sheep are at ease. They are there in the open, bathing in the air on all sides. The animalsâ sweat smokes as if someone had just set fire to the hill. The bees who have been prisoners in their wool since the Châ-teauneuf hives set themselves free, flying awkwardly in this too pure air and falling into the fleece of thyme and wormwood. The ewes give birth. The males go off to push their snouts straight into the north wind, filling their brains with the fresh air until they shake off the surplus with a sneeze that leaves them trembling with drunkenness. All the bad folk are far off.
Here, everything is new, land and men. You have wine from Arnoulas and water in seven lovely springs. Springs as round-faced as girls, all gushing and plump. Itâs true that this
The grass is of a green gold and, when the wind ruffles it, it discovers its age underneath, as old as the earth. Blue schist, completely bare, creaks under the sun in fits and starts and suddenly cascades down to
the road, making all the echoes ring. Then everything falls still. The torrent of stone stops. The schist creaks. Mallefougasse lives a life which is not vegetable. The trees there have learned to keep quiet. It freely lives the life of earth and stones. Under that light curtain of flesh, blue rocks, clay-pits, quivering eyelids of sand, throbs the interior of the world.
Everything here is religion. There, in the crushed grass, is the litter of the gods!
The little village is made up of four houses lying level with the ground and a barn called âthe lookoutâ because it raises the sly vent of its pulley window over a bank. The other walls are flat and windowless. The stones, unplastered, are eaten away by the wind. The doors have thick bolts, all glistening with oil, which slip into their cylinders like fat black rats, silent and solid. The people from here have that long unwavering look that goes to the core of things, through men, women, the hills, and the depths of the sky.
Thus, everything is ready on this high overhang of the earth to serve as altar and sacrificial stone, and yet, the shepherds have chosen it for other, more simple reasons.
In Crau, of course, the sheep have plenty of room, and then, there they are, in the worst of the heat along the narrow roads, squeezed together, running as one thick body, like water, with no air around them.
And so, they move through the areas where land is valuable, where, on plots the size of postage stamps, you can make money growing leeks, parsley, peaches, apricots, grapes. Just try letting them spread out there! Youâll find a shotgun exploding in your ear. Thus, you go along your flat way from one dust cloud to another, without ever stepping beyond the telegraph poles, with only one desire nevertheless, to
reach the land, yes, the land! The land of leeks, parsley, peach trees, that isnât land anymore. Itâs so mixed with night soil, manure, droppings, and dung that it has become human rottenness, and they can have it! No, the land, the great land, our own, the land that remained after the flood, has dried itself off and there it is, the land where thereâs room for everyone.
And Mallefougasse is it!
Whatâs more, when youâre there, youâre at a point where youâve come more than a hundred kilometers along the way, and you have more than a hundred kilometers left to go. So you have the right to rest. Nothing screams in you if you lie down by the side of the road. Itâs a stopping point, and it suits us just right. Itâs like a great pool. The water of herds fills it at leisure, laps a bit, and then sleeps. But what is most beautiful is the great breadth of it. You donât have to pay attention to this earth like a bit of the night, to the fearful trees, to the free movements of the wind, no, the sheep are at ease. They are there in the open, bathing in the air on all sides. The animalsâ sweat smokes as if someone had just set fire to the hill. The bees who have been prisoners in their wool since the Châ-teauneuf hives set themselves free, flying awkwardly in this too pure air and falling into the fleece of thyme and wormwood. The ewes give birth. The males go off to push their snouts straight into the north wind, filling their brains with the fresh air until they shake off the surplus with a sneeze that leaves them trembling with drunkenness. All the bad folk are far off.
Here, everything is new, land and men. You have wine from Arnoulas and water in seven lovely springs. Springs as round-faced as girls, all gushing and plump. Itâs true that this
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