are magicians?

--No, no, mademoiselle, but here we live closer to the stars, and we
know more about what happens up there than people who live in the
plains.

She kept looking at the stars, her head on her hands, wrapped in the
sheepskin like a small heavenly shepherd:

--How many there are! How beautiful! I have never seen so many. Do you
know their names, shepherd?

--Of course, lady. There you are! Just above our heads, that's the
Milky Way. Further on you have the Great Bear. And so, he described to
her in great detail, some of the magic of the star-filled panoply....

--One of the stars, which the shepherds name, Maguelonne, I said,
chases Saturn and marries him every seven years.

--What, shepherd! Are there star marriages, then?

--Oh yes, my Lady.

I was trying to explain to her what these marriages were about, when I
felt something cool and fine on my shoulder. It was her head, heavy
with sleep, placed on me with just a delightful brush of her ribbons,
lace, and dark tresses. She stayed just like that, unmoving, right
until the stars faded in the coming daylight. As for me, I watched her
sleeping, being somewhat troubled in my soul, but that clear night,
which had only ever given me beautiful thoughts, had kept me in an
innocent frame of mind. The stars all around us continued their
stately, silent journey like a great docile flock in the sky. At times,
I imagined that one of these stars, the finest one, the most brilliant,
having lost its way, had come to settle, gently, on my shoulder, to
sleep....

THE ARLESIENNE

As you go down to the village from the windmill, the road passes a farm
situated behind a large courtyard planted with tall Mediterranean
nettle trees. It's a typical house of a Provencal tenant farmer with
its red tiles, large brown facade, and haphazardly placed doors and
windows. It has a weather-cock right on top of the loft, and a pulley
to hoist hay, with a few tufts of old hay sticking out....

What was it about this particular house that struck me? Why did the
closed gate freeze my blood? I don't know; but I do know that the house
gave me the shivers. It was choked by an eerie silence. No dogs barked.
Guinea fowl scattered silently. Nothing was heard from inside the
grounds, not even the ubiquitous mule's bell.... Were it not for white
curtains at the windows and smoke rising from the roof, the place could
have been deserted.

Yesterday, around midday, I was walkin