Pascal Kignard is one of the most significant writers of modern France. Critics compared this prose writer, awarded the Goncourt Prize in 2002, with Marguerite Duras. For his images, hovering in the magic triangle between a philosophical essay, a novel and high poetry, there are no ready-made expressions, no words from the usual dictionary. For the first time in Russian, the novel “The Salon in Württemberg” was published, from which the wide fame of Pascal Quignard, an author who knows the secret of Proustian refined hermeneutical writing. The hero of the story is a renowned musician, an unsurpassed performer of ancient music on the viola da gamba, whose focus on inner life sometimes resembles Monsieur de Sainte-Colombe from Quignard’s story “All the Mornings of the World.” Refusing to give concerts and lessons, he shuts himself up in an old house in Württemberg and begins to remember all the sorrows and joys of childhood and youth. This is essentially an exquisite game of hide and seek with himself, wandering through the labyrinth of memory of those whom he loved and who loved him. Forgotten names and titles, the taste and smell of the past emerge. Like caramel on the cheek and a snatch of a children's song, the memory of a lost friend, of that undivided friendship that is higher than love bursts in.