Small white clouds floated in the pale sky.  The sun was shedding soft rays, which cast a sort of gold dust over the country, the yellow expanse of which spread out all ripe.  One saw neither the brilliant light nor the dark shadows of summer.  The foliage gilded the black earth in large patches.  The river ran more slowly, weary at the task of having rendered the fields fruitful for a season.  And the valley remained calm and strong.  It already wore the first furrows of winter, but it preserved within it the warmth of its last labour, displaying its robust charms, free from the weeds of spring, more majestically beautiful, like that second youth, of woman who has given birth to life.

My uncle Lazare remained silent; then, turning towards me, said: 

“Do you remember, Jean?  It is more than twenty years ago since I brought you here early one May morning.  On that particular day I showed you the valley full of feverish activity, labouring for the fruits of autumn.  Look; the valley has just performed its task again.”

“I remember, dear uncle,” I replied.  “I was quaking with fear on that day; but you were good, and your lesson was convincing.  I owe you all my happiness.”

“Yes, you have reached the autumn.  You have laboured and are gathering in the harvest.  Man, my boy, was created after the way of the earth.  And we, like the common mother, are eternal:  the green leaves are born again each year from dry leaves; I am born again in you, and you will be born again in your children.  I am telling you this so that old age may not alarm you, so that you may know how to die in peace, as dies this verdure, which will shoot out again from its own germs next spring.”

I listened to my uncle and thought of Babet, who was sleeping in her great bed spread with white linen.  The dear creature was about to give birth to a child after the manner of this fertile soil which had given us fortune.  She also had reached the autumn:  she had the beaming smile and serene robustness of the valley.  I seemed to see her beneath the yellow sun, tired and happy, experiencing noble delight at being a mother.  And I no longer knew whether my uncle Lazare was talking to me of my dear valley, or of my dear Babet.

We slowly ascended the hills.  Below, along the Durance, were the meadows, broad, raw green swards; next came the yellow fields, intersected here and there by greyish olive and slender almond trees, planted wide apart in rows; then, right up above, were the vines, great stumps with shoots trailing along the ground.

The vine is treated in the south of France like a hardy housewife, and not like a delicate young lady, as in the north.  It grows somewhat as it likes, according to the good will of rain and sun.  The stumps, which are planted in double rows, and form long lines, throw sprays of dark verdure around them.  Wheat or oats are sown between.  A vineyard resembles an immense piece of striped material, made of the green bands formed by the vine leaves, and of yellow ribbon represented by the stubble.