Eric Rohmer on location

This is from Jean-Claude Brialy's memoir Le Ruisseau des singes as quoted in La Nouvelle vague et le cinéma d'auteur by Philippe Mary. Brialy is discussing making Claire's Knee directed by Eric Rohmer. (page 139 my translation)

During filming, he [Rohmer] led the life of a monk or an ascetic. He slept in the barn of the house on a litter which he himself made and he washed in a basin of ice-cold water. He ate a little salad, allowing himself a hard-boiled egg on feast days and rose before everyone else at 5 in the morning, going off to run by himself in the mountains and on the river banks. He was in fine shape.