This highly atmospheric pastel is illustrative of the haunting sense of melancholy which Cazin could conjure up in his best work. In nocturnal scenes such as this he appears far closer to the Symbolists of his era than to his Impressionist contemporaries. Given the relatively flat topography of this scene it may well be that it depicts a village in Seine-et-Marne rather than one of the steeply sloping villages on the channel coast near Boulogne.