“They were toiling onward, making slow progress in the snow, among the stones, on the vast expanse of the high deserted plateau. From time to time the horse stumbled. Without hearing anything yet, he could see the breath issuing from the horse’s nostrils. One of the men, at least, knew the region. They were following the trail although it had disappeared days ago under the layer of dirty white snow.” 

In this passage from the story’s first paragraph, Camus vividly paints the scene Daru watches from his window. This purely visual account of Balducci’s and the Arab’s journey across the vast, empty plateau is intensified by the evocation of the stumbling horse whose strained breath is visible in the frigid air. The detail that at least one of the two men knows the snow-covered trail suggests that at least one man is indigenous to the region, which would prove advantageous; that there might be a relationship of disparity between the men is similarly indicated by a preceding note that one sits atop the horse while the other walks, perhaps more akin to the horse than to its rider. Whereas snow can be associated with fond images—frolicking children or winter sports, for example—here its markedly sullied state coupled with its power to obscure the travelers’ path literally not only indicates the harsh, inhospitable landscape of the story’s setting, but also metaphorically portends the morally murky tale to follow. 

“Now shiploads of wheat were arriving from France and the worst was over. But it would be hard to forget that poverty, that army of ragged ghosts wandering in the sunlight, the plateaus burned to a cinder month after month, the earth shriveled up little by little, literally scorched, every stone bursting into dust under one’s foot. The sheep had died then by thousands and even a few men, here and there, sometimes without anyone’s knowing […] And suddenly this snow, without warning, without the foretaste of rain. This is the way the region was, cruel to live in, even without men—who didn’t help matters either. But Daru had been born here. Everywhere else, he felt exiled.”

Here the brutal landscape of extremes figures prominently, with details of the recent, unexpected, seasonally early blizzard after eight months of drought, which scorched nearby inhabitants’ crops and killed off many livestock.