During these first moments, Lucile faded away and Gaston belonged to her and her alone. She would be careful not to cry and kiss him for too long. She would make him a good lunch, run his bath, tell him immediately about his affairs: "You know, I took good care of them. You remember that piece of land you wanted, near the Étang-Neû? I bought it, it's yours. I also bought that meadow of the Montmorts' that borders on ours-the one the Viscount was adamant he wouldn't sell to us. Well, I waited for the right moment. I got what I wanted. Are you pleased? I've put your gold, your silverware, the family jewellery all in a safe place. I did everything, courageously, all by myself. If I'd had to count on your wife… You can see I'm your only real friend, can't you? That I'm the only one who really understands you? But go and see your wife, my boy. Go on. Just don't expect much from her. She's a cold, rebellious creature. Together, though, we'll be able to bend her to our will better than I could do alone. She eludes me with her long silences, whereas you have the right to ask her what she's thinking. You're the master of the house: you can demand to know. Go, go and see her! Take from her what's rightfully yours: her beauty, her youth… I've heard that in Dijon… You shouldn't, my dear Gaston. A mistress is expensive. But I'm sure your long absence will have made you love our old house even more… Oh, what wonderful, peaceful days we're going to spend together," murmured Madame Angellier. She had stood up and was walking around the room holding an imaginary hand and leaning against a phantom shoulder. "Come on, let's go downstairs. I've had a light meal prepared for you in the sitting room. You've lost weight, Gaston. Come, you've got to have something to eat."

Without thinking, she opened the door, went down the staircase. Yes, this was how she would come down from her room in the evening, opening the door to surprise the children: Gaston in an armchair next to the window with his wife by his side, reading to him. It was his wife's duty, her role, to look after him, to amuse him. When he was recovering from typhoid fever, Lucile used to read the newspapers to him. Her voice was soft and pleasant. She couldn't deny that even she herself had sometimes enjoyed listening to Lucile read. A soft, low voice… But was it that voice she could hear now? No, she must be dreaming! She'd allowed her imagination to drift beyond the acceptable limit. She pulled herself up, took a few steps and walked into the sitting room. The armchair had been moved next to the window and sitting in it, his injured arm leaning on the armrest, smoking a pipe, his feet on the little stool where Gaston used to sit as a child, she saw the German in his green uniform-the invader, the enemy-and next to him Lucile, who was reading a book out loud.

For a moment no one said a word. They both stood up. Lucile dropped the book she was holding. The officer quickly picked it up from the floor and put it on the table.

"Madame," he muttered, "your daughter-in-law was kind enough to allow me to come and keep her company for a few moments."

The old woman, very pale, nodded. "You're in charge here."

"And since some new books were sent to me from Paris, I took the liberty of…"

"You're in charge here," Madame Angellier said again.

She turned and walked out. Lucile heard her say to the cook, "I'll be staying in my room from now on. You will bring my meals to me upstairs."

"Today, Madame?"

"Today, tomorrow and for as long as this gentleman is in the house."

When she had gone upstairs and they could no longer hear her footsteps in the depths of the house, the German whispered, "That will be heaven."

16

The Viscountess de Montmort suffered from insomnia. She was in tune with the cosmos; all the great contemporary problems touched her soul. When she thought about the future of the white race, or Franco-German relations, or the threat posed by the Freemasons and Communism, sleep was banished. Chills ran through her body. She would get up, put on an old worm-eaten fur wrap and go out into the grounds. She despised dressing up, perhaps because she had lost hope that putting on a pretty dress could counterbalance the overall effect of her plainness (she had a long red nose, an awkward figure and bad skin), perhaps because of a natural sense of pride that made her believe others couldn't help but see her striking qualities, even beneath a battered felt hat or a knitted wool coat (spinach-green and canary-yellow) that the cook would have rejected in horror, or perhaps out of her contempt for trivial detail. "How important is it, my dear?" she would say sweetly to her husband when he criticised her for coming down to dinner wearing two different shoes. But she quickly returned to earth when it came to overseeing the servants' work or managing their estate.

Whenever she couldn't sleep, she would walk through the grounds reciting poetry or rush to the henhouse and examine the three enormous locks that protected the door; she kept an eye on the cows (since the war had started, no one grew flowers on the lawns any more, the cattle slept there), and in the soft moonlight she would stroll through the vegetable garden and count the maize. She was being robbed. Before the war it was almost unheard of to grow maize in this rich area where poultry was fed on wheat and oats. Now, though, the requisitioning agents searched the lofts for sacks of wheat and the housewives had no grain to feed their hens. People had come to the château to ask for feed, but the Montmorts were hoarding it, mainly for themselves, but also for all their friends and acquaintances in the area. The farmers were angry. "We'd be happy to pay," they said. She wouldn't have charged them anything actually, but that wasn't the issue and they sensed it. They could tell they were up against a kind of brotherhood, like the Freemasons, a closing of ranks that meant that they and their money were insignificant compared to the satisfaction the Montmorts got from doing a favour for the Baron de Montrefaut or the Countess de Pignepoule. Since they weren't allowed to buy, they simply took. There were no longer any gamekeepers at the château; they'd been taken prisoner and there weren't enough men in the area to replace them. It was also impossible to find workmen or the materials to rebuild the crumbling walls. The farmers got in through the gaps, poached whatever they wanted, fished in the lake, stole hens, corn or tomato plants-just helped themselves to anything, in fact.

Monsieur de Montmort's situation was complicated. On the one hand, he was the Mayor and didn't want to upset his constituents. On the other, he naturally cared about his estate. Nevertheless, he would have chosen to turn a blind eye to it all if it hadn't been for his wife, who rejected any compromise or show of weakness on principle. "All you want is a quiet life," she said sharply to her husband. "Our Lord Himself said: 'I have not come to bring peace but the sword.'"

"You're not Jesus Christ," Amaury replied grumpily, but it had long ago been accepted in the family that the Viscountess had the soul of an apostle and that her opinions were prophetic. What was more, Amaury was even more inclined to adopt the Viscountess's judgements since she was the one with the family fortune and she kept her purse strings tightly closed. He therefore loyally supported her and waged a bitter war against the poachers, the thieves, the teacher who didn't go to Mass and the postman, who was suspected of being a member of the "Popular Front" even though he had ostentatiously hung a picture of Maréchal Pétain on the door of the telephone booth in the Post Office.

And so the Viscountess walked through her grounds on a beautiful June evening and recited the poetry she intended her protégées from the school to recite on Mother's Day. She would have liked to have composed a poem herself; however, her talent was really for prose (when she wrote, she felt the deluge of ideas so powerfully that she often had to put down her pen and run her hands under cold water to force back into them the blood that had rushed to her head). The obligation to make things rhyme was unbearable. Perhaps, therefore, instead of the poem to the glory of the French Mother she would so like to compose, she would write an incantation in prose: "O Mother!" would exclaim one of the youngest pupils, dressed all in white and holding a bouquet of wild flowers in her hand. "O Mother! Let me see your sweet face above my little bed while the storm rages outside. The sky darkens the earth, but a radiant dawn approaches. Smile, O kind Mother! See how your child is following the Maréchal who holds peace and happiness in his hands. Join me and all the children, all the mothers in France, to form a blissful circle around the venerable Wise One who restores hope in our hearts!"