In the left hand corner of the large fireplace stood a plaster image of the Holy Virgin, surrounded by artificial flowers; she is the traditional good mother of all old Provencal women, however irreligious they may be.

A passage led from the room into a yard situated at the rear of the house; in this yard there was a well.

Aunt Dide's bedroom was on the left side of the passage; it was a little apartment containing an iron bedstead and one chair; Silvere slept in a still smaller room on the right hand side, just large enough for a trestle bedstead; and he had been obliged to plan a set of shelves, reaching up to the ceiling, to keep by him all those dear odd volumes which he saved his sous to purchase from a neighbouring general dealer.

When he read at night-time, he would hang his lamp on a nail at the head of the bed.

If his grandmother had an attack, he merely had to leap out at the first gasp to be at her side in a moment.
The young man led the life of a child.