world," said my grandmother, who would have liked nothing better than to travel.

"I don't know where he went, but he surely learned to make good pastry! He cooked for the admiral a year. You should taste his croissants and his brioches. And puff paste is his speciality."

The puff paste specialist made us a comic little salute and, with hands steadying himself on the staircase walls, plunged in one unbroken movement into the bakeroom.

I kept gazing after him until my grandmother called twice to get me

away.

My aunt had presented a problem. I owed the solution to a storm. To tell the truth I did little more at that time than gather together the elements of the problem; it was only later on when I was old enough to understand, that I recognized their signifi-

cance.

In our family weather forecasts, the Round always played a leading part. I don't know why that lonely, high plateau, bare as a mesa and reddish, had such a name. Perhaps it was because of the storms that seemed to wheel uncertainly around it before taking their final direction.

At any rate, that very day, after a whole week of fine weather, the leaden sky above the Round warned us all that the first equinoctial storm was getting ready to break. My father gave up the walk he had been planning for the afternoon and on which my mother and I were to have gone along, as we did every day. I decided to send picture post cards to my school friends.

But the storm remained far away, only a few brief showers falling on the town and its gardens, just enough to fill the air with a warm, sensuous odor of wet earth. Once again the Round had lived up to its name.

After four o'clock, when there was no longer any danger of rain, my

father decided to go to the Ribeyres district to see if our orchards had suffered any damage; my mother suggested to my aunt that they do some shopping; I rode off on my bike to the post office.

I was on my way back when I saw the butcher boy just finishing pumping up the tires of his bicycle. He had taken off his apron and canvas jacket and was wearing espadrilles. His shirt sleeves were rolled up high impressive-looking muscles. Filled with sudden curiosity, I stopped in front of the newspaper vendor's and waited.

over

He rode away slowly toward the bakery. It happened that the bakery woman's daughter was sitting on a chair that stood on the sidewalk; she was talking, her head raised, her eyes on the windows. I thought at first she was speaking to a neighbor-woman. Then, seeing Pierre, the bakery boy seated in the doorway, I understood that if she wasn't exactly talking to him, at least he was there as a good excuse for her to ramble on. I liked the proprietress of the bakery, but her daughter irritated me. She so obviously wanted to be the center of the picture.

Armand, the butcher, rode up beside her and stopped with one foot on the sidewalk. Had my aunt been mistaken after all?

I could see only the young man's back, and this broad motionless back told me nothing... But the girl, coquettish and vain, I suppose, was outdoing herself in alluring wiles, all the time glancing at the nearby windows. I couldn't hear distinctly what she was saying, but one thing I did know for certain: the young wasn't answering her. His resonant, baritone voice would have reached me.

Could I stay any longer watching them? The moment came when I thought I had to go. I got on my bike and started to go. But I meant to take

13