In the shadowed woods of Le Selve, poverty, custom, and ancient privilege collide with devastating force. A dying peasant is left uncared for by his own family, and the young steward Cyrille arrives too late to save him, confronting a world where burial costs matter more than mercy and institutions have long abandoned the poor. His outrage only deepens the sense of menace as he moves through the forest roads, where isolation, superstition, and lawlessness shape every human relation. Cyrille himself is a Russian nobleman, former officer, and political exile whose humanitarian ideals led to imprisonment and escape. Hidden in the Gandolfo estate, he finds purpose in serving the peasants and protecting the land, even as he meditates on the beauty and indifference of the landscape, its ruins, tombs, and deep historical past. But his reforming spirit meets fierce resistance: the woodlanders resent the loss of old feudal "rights" to hunt, gather, and steal, while figures like Muriella and Caterina expose the harsh choices facing women and the dangerous pressures of the forest world. Among these tensions stands a young woman more at home in the trees than in her uncle's house, proud, wounded, and skeptical of happiness itself. Her encounter with Cyrille reveals both his hope and her hard-earned defiance, binding the novel's social conflict to a haunting study of loneliness, duty, and survival. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.
