La retraite sentimentale - Gabrielle Colette

In the last in the series of Colette's Claudine books, we find Claudine separated from her tubercular husband, Renaud, who is recuperating in a Swiss hospital. She goes to the countryside to stay with her friend, Annie, and experiences relief from her depression in the pleasures of the natural world--and in encouraging her friend to have an affair. RETREAT FROM LOVE was written a few years after the four original Claudine tales, and rumor has it that Colette wrote it to have a small revenge on her first husband, "Monsieur Willy," on whom Renaud (who dies in the end) was apparently based.