Excerpt from A World Bewitched

The Sieur Mornat was not the oldest of the prominent dwellers in the neighbourhood of Rochefendue. But he seemed the only man among them who could claim active experience of the times of Henri le Belliqueux. Though advanced in life, he had kept off the grasp of decay so feared by him. Born towards the end of the reign of Francois I., and with sixty years passing over his head and leaving it white indeed, he retained a clearness of eye, an energy of frame, a smoothness of skin, which most men of forty might have envied him.

It was an early evening in June. Mornat had been out of doors all day. He looked fresh and even gay, however: being clad with as much care as if he were going to, or coming from, some festival. Yet the path taken by him, and the vigour with which he strode onward, or climbed, or descended, seemed designedly chosen for making an extreme call on his powers of endurance. And once, on reaching a certain height in the irregular track, he paused, and looked upward and to right and left of him, and then downward.

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