The little town had vanished with its smoke; the odor of the great forests glided off the cliffs with the fog and drowned it to the depths of its factory alleys; nothing was left save the starry night and around him these miles and miles of forest. The afternoon’s enchantment returned. Grange realized that half his life was going to be restored to him: in wartime, the night is inhabited.

Julien Gracq, Balcony in the Forest, loc. 35