Eau-de-vie- flavored with myrtle," said the old woman. "Try it!" She watched intently as Ellie raised the glass to her lips. "Myrtle from the garden. I steep the berries with honey in the local firewater, but the secret ingredient is the flower, added for the final day. Such a pretty white flower it is, drowned in purple for just one day."
The liqueur tasted of stewed plums. Not unpleasant, but very strong.

We are so many different people in one lifetime.

The sunlight could not quite dispel the difference in atmosphere now that she had seen the interior of the garden. It was as if a dark underside had been revealed that changed the cast of the whole property. But the whimsy of it, the way the eye was drawn down through every vista, the inventiveness, the fairy-tale quality, the melancholy of the lost gardens- it all excited her.

After her sister's visit, Marthe's head was brimming with new pictures: the fields of lavender at Valensole, all the subtle grades of blue and purple; the way twilight melted them all into one; the precise hues of the liquid distilled from each plant, the shape and color of the bottles, and a new understanding of the surroundings where she was learning her craft. Just as plant variations were bred together to crete new hybrids- like the lavandin from the delicate wild lavender- this was what she did with the descriptions her sister had supplied; she grafted them on to the sights she remembered from childhood and reinvigorated them.

Dark rocks stood waiting to be sculpted by the wind. Tiny seeds rode the air, waiting to fall and take root. Under the sea, corals formed and pearls hardened. Sap rose and juices fed along the vines. White trumpets flowered, and mandarins and lemons shone like drops in fragrant groves.

Scrubby evergreen bushes released a strong scent of resin and honey; forests of pine gave way to gentle south-facing vineyards disturbed only by the ululation of early summer cicadas. Sitting up tall on the seat, she craned around eagerly to see what plants thrived naturally.
It was a wild and romantic place, Laurent de Fayols had written, the whole island once bought as a wedding gift to his wife by a man who had made his fortune in the silver mines of Mexico. One of three small specks in the Mediterranean known as the Golden Isles, after the oranges, lemons, and grapefruit that glowed like lamps in their citrus groves.
There were few reference works in English that offered information beyond superficial facts about the island, and those she had managed to find were old. The best had been published in 1880, by a journalist called Adolphe Smith. Ellie had been struck by the loveliness of his "description of the most Southern Point of the French Riviera":


'The island is divided into seven ranges of small hills, and in the numerous valleys thus created are walks sheltered from every wind, where the umbrella pines throw their deep shade over the path and mingle their balsamic odor with the scent of the thyme, myrtle and the tamarisk.