VV(18): Serre Chaude

[Dave Monroe]

"This had been at Serre Chaude, their estate in Normandy, once the ancestral 
home of a family whose blood had long since turned to a plae ichor and 
vaporized away into the frosty skies over Amiens." (V., Ch. 14, Sec. i, p. 
395)

"Serre Chaude" = quelle surprise, "hot house," and, no, I'm not going to 
even attempt to catalog that one here, but ...

"Would it rain?  The clouds hung like leprous tissue" (p. 394).  Cf. that 
"pale ichor ... vaporized away into the frosty skies," minus the "frosty" 
...

"... there had been heat lightning outside ....  Late summer, like today." 
(p. 395) ...

"She gazed up at the sky, through one of the room's side windows.  God, 
would it ever rain?" (p. 396) ...

"Her room was hot and airless." (p. 396) ...

"Back in the hot room ..." (p. 397) ...

"The night was windless, hot." (p. 398) ...

"The next day the same clouds were over the city, but it did not rain." (p. 
403)

"It was never going to rain." (p. 404)

Amiens, I belive, might have some particular significance, but I'm at a loss 
as to suggesting what that significance might be, in particular.  Has a 
Cathedral, was of some import in both the Napoleanic and the "Great" (i.e., 
First World) Wars, but ... and recall that, for example, Andre Malraux's La 
Condition Humaine (1933) is translated as Man's Estate in the U.K. (Man's 
Fate in the U.S.).  But I've got to run for the moment, will be back ...
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