The passage below relates a visit made by a group of young students to a well-known château at Grignan in Provence, southern France. This château was made famous by one of its seventeenth-century inhabitants, Mme de Sévigné, whose Lettres set down for posterity the customs, judgments and opinions of her period. Note that Provence is not to be confused with province. Provence was an old French province, among many others like Alsace, Bretagne, Limousin and Normandie.

Most of this passage is narrated in the pluperfect tense, highlighted whenever it occurs. The first two sentences, however, contain a preterit (rentra) and an imperfect (gardait), referring to what follows. The pluperfect tense, referring to what precedes, is found in both active and passive voices (avions parcouru, avait été construit), as well as in the reflexive (s’était levé).