It was the same at Vezelay, the emptiness and the clean lines of it making me feel pity for all those squashed together on the beaches of the Cote d'Azur. Inside the basilica there were no more than a dozen people. I bought a plan and followed the capitals from column to column, the light blazing down from simple and solemn arches: the execution of Agag; the death of St Paul the Hermit, for whom two lions dig a grave; the Mystic Mill.

Towards its southern boundary the Morvan slopes upwards, though never higher than 3,000ft at the Haut-Folin. In this area the terrain is heavily wooded and was a haunt of the Maquis during the last war. On the edge of the Foret Domaniale d'Anost I walked to a place called Bardiaux where there were some Gallo-Roman ruins a small theatre set in the hillside with a fine view out over the countryside, all neat with lawn-like fields, big hedges and fluffy trees from a child's cut-out book. White Charolais cattle from the same pretend farmyard stood bright against the green, and the clouds were scalloped in white paper against the blue. Towards Anost itself, in one of the villages, I found a ghost of a grocer's shop, up narrow stairs, the iron banisters loose in stone steps. There was a brown light inside, the murkiness made heavy by smells that were warm and soft: fresh bread, cream, coffee, ham, methylated spirits, tobacco. The woman was large and leant her weight on straight arms that propped her against a counter of dark wood, its surface scarred deep, the scars black with grease. To one side was a door leading into the living room; it stood half open revealing a round table with an oilcloth on it, worn to the separate threads. I could see plates, half a loaf and a litre of red wine. Behind the woman the shelves sloped and spilled goods out across the floor; boxes of matches, tins of pilchards, jars of sweets, newspapers and cartons of macaroni. There was hardly room to move and the woman didn't. I must have made deliveries there a score of times. Yes, she remembered M Foulet: ``Un homme charmant.'' No, she did not remember me.

I drove out of the hills as night fell, taking care on every bend. It was the time of the harvest, and combines and tractors were everywhere, taking to the middle of the narrow roads, and the dust from the wheatfields drifted across my windscreen. As I approached Corbigny a white mist lay like a scarf along the surface of the Canal du Nivernais, and in the town itself the streets were empty, the shutters closed and the doors locked. There was not a footstep to be heard in the dark and there was only a little light spilling out from the hotel's restaurant, though the smell of food made me welcome. This was just how I liked it; provincial France at its best. He was a hard man, that Henri Foulet, but he certainly chose a good place to live in.