It was 2 September: like every other day, it was going to be fine. Bernard, still in bed, heard the car’s engine turn in the dawn silence and – far away across the fields, on the farms – the last cockcrows greeting the break of day. — Everything’s going to start all over again, he said to himself. We’ll be doing this for ever. Down below, the engine roared: automatically Bernard counted the successive gear changes. Claude drove away, Bernard went back to sleep. Everything should have started all over again, if Bernard had been capable of rediscovering the careless ardour of those first days; living only for his sleepless nights at the summit of La Vicomté; being, from one day to the next, only remembrance and anticipation of the dark. But he lapsed into endless reflections upon existence and fate. He no longer thought about anything but saving Catherine, forcing her to be happy in accordance with the idea he had of bliss.
