Les Avants enters the account as the marker for a hoped-for escape from winter in Paris, not as the setting of a narrated arrival. The chalet below it promises a temporary life shaped by snow, books, shared warmth, and a simpler household budget; the passage presents the journey as feasible but conditional on Hadley Richardson’s wishes.

A Winter Refuge Imagined

With the first cold rains, Paris’s familiar streets become wet and dark, and Hemingway imagines a different winter beyond the city. Below Les Avants, he recalls a chalet with an excellent pension. Rain there would fall as snow through the pines, covering the road and the high hillsides; at night, the snow would creak underfoot as the couple walked home. The change of landscape is also a change of daily rhythm: instead of the city’s rain and workroom, the imagined retreat offers mountain air, books, and nights together in a warm bed with the windows open and stars visible.

Cost, Work, and the Possibility of Leaving

The plan depends on economy rather than abundance. Third-class train travel would be inexpensive, and the pension would cost only a little more than the couple’s Paris expenses. Hemingway could give up the hotel room where he wrote while retaining the nominal rent on their flat. Journalism written for Toronto had generated checks that were due, and he believed he could continue that work anywhere. The calculations turn the chalet from a daydream into a practicable option, though he leaves the decision open: they would go if Hadley wanted to.

Distance and the Work of Writing

The proposed journey also carries a literary possibility. Hemingway wonders whether, away from Paris, he might write about Paris, just as he had written about Michigan while in Paris. At the time he does not yet understand that he does not know the city well enough; only later does he recognize that this is how the writing eventually worked out. Les Avants thus belongs to a moment when a change of place seems capable of changing the subject of his work as well as the weather around him.

A Proposed Destination, Not a Narrated Arrival

The passage establishes Les Avants as the destination of a plan, but does not narrate the couple’s arrival at the chalet. Later, the account describes their life in Schruns, where they stay at the Taube and find warmth, comfort, and mountain surroundings. That later episode should not be conflated with the proposed retreat below Les Avants. The distinction matters: Les Avants represents a possibility formed in response to Parisian winter, while the account’s later mountain life is located elsewhere.