To Pluck the Beautiful

In this final scene from A King Alone, Jean Giono draws a parallel between a mundane act of slaughter and a deeper, almost mystical transformation. The plucking and beheading of a goose becomes an eerie metaphor for the merging of two individuals into one, say, after a sacred marriage—or enlightenment—of Langlois, the stoic central figure of the story. As he stands motionless in the snow, watching the blood pool at his feet, the moment transforms into something ritualistic and symbolic: a quiet confrontation with the violence of revelation, the stripping away of the beautiful to expose the raw truth. Giono culminates this strange initiation not with epiphany but with explosion—Langlois’s head “taking on the measure of the universe”—suggesting that true inner reckoning may be as destructive to our independence as it is illuminating as a star in the night sky:

We remembered that time very well indeed.

The cigars, of course!

But we said to ourselves, “It’s surely to honor his lady. Many young ladies are repulsed by a pipe. Early in a marriage, one makes concessions. Older husbands are always happy to do at least one nice thing without too much effort. Afterwards, things fall into place.” We said to ourselves, “He’ll go back to his pipe.”

It was right after the first snowfall (a dusting of autumn snow that fell on October 20, a very fine layer, but it was enough to turn the whole countryside white, much whiter even than when there was a meter of snow, snow dust that has a sparkle like salt) that Anselmie saw Langlois turn up at her place.

The next day there must have been fifty of us at Anselmie’s, filing through for hours.

We said to her, “So, tell us. What did he say to you? What did he do?”

“He came,” she said.

And it was ages before we could get anything else out of her than “He came.”

That woman is a brute!

Still, we managed to learn a little something. The snow had fallen. The countryside was completely white. Langlois had arrived at Anselmie’s. He didn’t go in. He opened the door and shouted, “Are you there?”

“Of course I’m here,” Anselmie said.

“Come here,” Langlois said.

“Why should I?” Anselmie answered.

“Don’t argue,” Langlois said.

“Can I at least put my leeks in the soup?”

“Hurry,” Langlois said.

“The way he sounded,” Anselmie said to us, “made me drop my leeks and rush out to him.”

“How’d he sound?” we asked her. “Talk. The prosecutor is coming, you know. He’ll get you to talk.”

“Well, what do you want me to say? He was angry!”

“Langlois?”

“Yes. His voice was angry.”

“Fine. So you came out and he was angry?”

“Not at all!”

“So how was he?”

“Like always.”

“No more?”

“No more what? No, like always.”

“He didn’t seem crazy?”

“Him? Oh, you people! Crazy? You’ve no idea! Not at all; he was just like always.”

“He wasn’t nasty?”

“Not at all. I told you he was the way he always was. You know he wasn’t much fun; well, he kept on being not much fun, but barely. He was nice!”

“So what did he say to you?”

“He said, ‘Do you have any geese?’ I said, ‘I might; it depends.’ ‘Go get me one,’ he said. I said, ‘They don’t have much meat on them,’ but he insisted, so I said, ‘Well, come along then.’ We went around the shed and I caught a goose for him.”

She stopped speaking. We were harsh: “Go on, talk!”

“Well… that’s all,” said Anselmie.

“What do you mean, that’s all?”

“I mean, that’s all. He said to me, ‘Cut off its head.’ I picked up the cleaver and I cut off the goose’s head.”

“Where?”

“Where what?” she said. “On the chopping block, of course.”

“Where was the chopping block?”

“In the shed, for Pete’s sake.”

“And what was Langlois doing?”

“He was keeping his distance.”

“Where?”

“Outside the shed.”

“In the snow?”

“Oh! There wasn’t much snow.”

“Talk, then!” And we jostled her.

“You’re getting on my nerves,” she said. “I’m telling you, that’s all that happened. If I say that’s all, that’s all, for Pete’s sake. He said to me, ‘Hand it over.’ And I gave him the goose. He held it by the feet. And, well, he watched it bleeding on the snow. When it had bled for a moment, he gave it back to me. He said, ‘Here, take it. And go away.’ And I went back in with the goose. And I said to myself, ‘I suppose he wants me to pluck it.’ So I started to pluck it. And when it was plucked, I looked. He was still in the same spot. Just standing there. He was looking at the goose’s blood at his feet. I said to him, ‘It’s plucked, Monsieur Langlois.’ He didn’t answer me and he didn’t budge. I said to myself, ‘He’s not deaf. He heard you. When he’s ready, he’ll come get it.’ And I made my soup. Five o’clock came. Night was falling. I go out to get some wood. He was still in the same spot. I said to him again, ‘It’s plucked, Monsieur Langlois. You can take it.’ He didn’t budge. So I went in to get the goose to bring it to him but, when I came back out, he was gone.”

So this is what he must have done. He went back to his place and hung on until right after the soup. He waited for Sausage to take up her knitting and for Delphine to place her hands in her lap. He opened the box of cigars, like he always did, and he went out for a smoke.

Except that night it wasn’t a cigar he smoked but a stick of dynamite. Except that what Delphine and Sausage were looking at as they always had—the small ember, the small coach lamp—was a sizzling fuse.

And, at the back of the garden, there was an enormous golden spray that lit up the night for a second. It was Langlois’s head finally taking on the measure of the universe.

Who is it who said, “A king without diversion is a man full of wretchedness”?

[Note: The quote “A king without diversion is a man full of wretchedness” comes from Blaise Pascal’s Pensées and speaks to the universal human tendency to seek distraction. Pascal argues that even a king—someone with immense wealth, power, and privilege—becomes miserable when left without diversions, because he must then confront his own inner emptiness. Diversions, whether in the form of entertainment, duties, or social obligations, serve to keep people from facing the deeper truths of their existence: fear, suffering, mortality, and the meaning of life. For Pascal, this isn’t merely a psychological insight but a spiritual one; he believed that without such distractions, people are forced to confront their true condition, which can ultimately lead to a religious awakening. In this sense, the quote isn’t just about kings—it reveals a universal truth about the human condition. So, Giono ends not with resolution, but with a Pascalian rupture: to be “a king alone,” without diversions, is to be left with nothing but the raw, unfiltered truth of existence—and it is too much.]