A footnote, perhaps the best part of a book that, at least on first reading, like the walnut, yielded little for great effort. This footnote is so beautiful that I may stipulate that I am to be buried with a walnut in the pocket of my favourite Italian cotton trousers.

One day, during the war, I was asked to find an empty strip of land on the plateau de Valensole where Allied planes in difficulty could land. I find a large field that fits the bill but there’s a magnificent three-hundred-year-old walnut tree in the middle of it. The owner of the field was willing to rent it to me, but stubbornly refused to cut down the beautiful tree. I eventually told him why we needed the land, whereupon he agreed. We start clearing the soil around the base of the tree; we follow the taproot . . . . At the end of the root, we find the bones of a knight buried in his armour. The man must have been a medieval knight . . . and he had a walnut in his pocket when he was killed, for the base of the taproot was exactly level with his thigh-bone. The walnut three had sprouted in the grave.

Quoted in Paul Veyne, René Char en see poèmes. Footnote from René Char, Hypnos (Seagull Books, 2014)