The Horseman on the Roof by Jean Giono Page A

cloak; he had knotted a handkerchief round his head; and, apart from his empty stomach, he felt very fit.
    He saw the Château de Ser among its trees, on a small knoll. He rode up as far as the terrace. It was a mountain manor house, crude and very dilapidated, the sort of place where one could imagine only a bachelor living. It was utterly deserted. His knocks on the door echoed through an empty house. In addition, under a large oak tree, he saw the earth freshly heaped over a rectangle of rather imposing size. All the same, he did not return to the road until he had circled the building two or three times and called repeatedly through a window on the first floor, which was still open, evidently because the shutters, rotted by rain and unhinged, wouldn’t close. It was useless to call; the house was undoubtedly empty. None the less, he observed that here the dead and the fleeing had respected highly military rules. Nothing was left lying about, the grave had been filled in and, save for the open window under which he was standing, camp had been broken according to the laws of the quartermaster’s science. Near the stables, even the hay had been forked over.
    He took to the road again, at a walk. The day was ending. His hunger was now really fierce, and he thought of the coffee the soldiers had been heating while he stupidly quarreled with the fat captain.
    The valley was widening out, and he saw that ahead of him, perhaps a league away, it gave onto another, much wider valley at right angles, in which the setting sun revealed a whole vista of groves and long alleys of poplars.
    He spurred his horse onward, hoping that he would find this region less devastated. He told himself that there wasn’t really much risk in eating, for example, a roast chicken. His mouth at once filled with a flood of saliva, which he had to spit out. He remembered his cigars. He still had four. He lit one of them.
    He was close to the wide valley when he saw that ahead of him the road was blocked by barrels piled into a sort of barricade. And someone shouted at him to stop. As the person persisted in shouting: “Halt!” yet remained concealed even when he had stopped dead in the middle of the road, he advanced again a little nearer the barrels. He saw a gun-barrel leveled at him, and at last there emerged the head and shoulders of a man in a sackcloth blouse. “Halt, I say,” shouted this sentry, “and don’t move, or I’ll pump you full of lead.”
    The man had a startlingly coarse face, as though someone had amused himself by assembling upon it the basest and most loathsome features. He was sucking the stump of a cheap paper cigar and his chin was stained with nicotine juice. He had been thoroughly shaved: beard, mustache, and hair. He had been scraped in this way for so long that his scalp was as bronzed as his cheeks. “Come on, step forward,” he said.
    Angelo drew close enough to touch the barrels. The gun was still pointing at him. The man had little pig’s eyes, very steady. “Got a note?” he said. As Angelo didn’t understand he explained that he meant a sort of passport issued by the mayor of the village, without which he wouldn’t be let through.
    â€œAnd why?” asked Angelo.
    â€œTo make sure you aren’t sick and bringing the cholera in your pocket.”
    â€œHell,” thought Angelo, “this isn’t the moment to tell the truth.”
    â€œSo far from bringing it,” he said, “or wanting to bring it, I cleared out as soon as I heard there’d been a case. I went up the mountain and never went back to the village; that’s why I haven’t got a note or even a coat.”
    The man was studying the horse’s head and its harness, which was very elegant: the frontal, cheekstrap, and noseband were encrusted with silver, the rosettes, curb chain and rings of the backstay were all solid silver. He darted a furtive look around