even here ugliness was not to be forgotten altogether: from time to time the train stopped at scaling, mud-colored little stations that clung to the embankment between the river and the cliff; against the military blue of the already dim windowpanes, soldiers in khaki were dozing on the mail wagons—then the green valley grew almost desolate for a moment: the train passed lugubrious yellow houses sliced out of the earth and apparently powdering the surrounding greenness with dust from the gypsum quarries

Julien Gracq, Balcony in the Forest, loc. 28