Génie immediately brought another cup of coffee for Girardin, and a bottle of old brandy.

  ‘Génie can stay,’ said Solange to Girardin. ‘She can and should hear everything, especially since she and her son have risked so much for us for the place. Sit down, Génie,’ she begged her.

  Génie who had just poured the coffee and the brandy, sat down at the other end of the table, with two pins of concealed pride pricking her ash-coloured irises. Before he began his story Girardin rubbed his face violently with the palm of his hand, flattening his nose several times in every direction as if thus to gather all his thoughts in the blood that painfully swelled the veins in his brow and imparted a purple tinge to his face. Then, tightly squeezing his chin between his thumb and forefinger with a concentrated air, he became motionless and turned to Solange.

  ‘This afternoon,’ he began, ‘through Broussillon, the communist professor, who recently escaped from Africa and has kept in contact with Mademoiselle Cécile Goudreau, I received two letters from the Count of Grandsailles. One of them Martin brought you, and the other was addressed to me. This one I immediately burned, after making careful notes. It contained secret instructions from the Count, which I shall regard as orders. By these orders I am required to deliver the copies of all the blueprints secretly in my possession to a communist organization in charge of sabotaging the whole plan to industrialize the Upper and Lower Libreux region.’

  ‘I can see that this is going to complicate the situation as regards Madame de Cléda’s property even further. Think of the reprisals,’ d’Angerville objected, taking Solange’s nervously clenched little hand.

  ‘Allow me to say that I believe just the opposite,’ Girardin calmly observed. ‘What are the demands of the Nazi commandant of the province with reference to the Moulin des Sources properties? To surrender the three large sluices of the Moulin for the electrification of the plain. This, I know, represents a great force in the hands of the enemy, and until now, in the name of honour, I have advised categorical refusal and resistance, at the almost certain risk of immediate and relentless expropriation. But now, as I have just said, I am of a contrary mind, and in the light of the prospective sabotage in which we will all tacitly or directly participate, the eventuality of yielding to the enemy’s demands becomes justified. Our seeming compliance toward him can only further and help to conceal the secret plans of the sabotage. For suddenly, instead of being treated with suspicion, as we have been until now, we shall be regarded and discreetly favoured as collaborationists, by virtue of which we may avoid becoming hostages. This will be our common alibi!’

  ‘No,’ said Solange, getting up, ‘nothing that even faintly resembles collaboration! On the day of reckoning everyone will have some pretext or other on which to try to justify himself. I am a woman. I understand nothing of the intricacies of the political activity of men, but I shall never do anything that involves France except after the dictates of my heart: and I shall not surrender one handful of this earth of Libreux in any kind of compromise. They will have to tear it from me!’

  At this moment Titan was heard barking.

  ‘Who can be coming at this hour?’ Solange asked with concern.

  Génie went down to open and reappeared with the taller of the Martin brothers, followed by Titan. Martin, with his bloodshot eyes and his somewhat sagging cheeks, looked a little like the old Saint Bernard.

  ‘Génie tells me you’re holding a parley about the Boches. I have to talk to Maître Girardin, but only when you’re through. What’s first is first. I’ll wait in the kitchen.’

  ‘Sit down here next to Génie,’ Solange ordered. ‘My house holds no secrets for the people of Libreux when it comes to things that concern Libreux.’

  She knew that Martin was one of the most devoted peasants of the region and that in his loyalty to the cause he was prepared for any sacrifice. Turning to Girardin who, though he knew Martin, seemed to hesitate, she begged him reassuringly but with a note of firmness, ‘Go ahead-you can speak freely about anything having to do with my property and my situation.’

  ‘I prefer to limit myself to the latter,’ Girardin then proceeded, ‘for it contains far more thorny problems than mere devotion to our country. If you refuse to surrender the water-power of the Moulin their first measure will be to cut down all your forests. This has already been announced in the provincial commandant’s ultimatum.’

  Solange gave a start, but remained silent.

  Girardin continued, ‘It is true that by surrendering the water-power you sacrifice at one stroke all the irrigated crops, nevertheless I am not unaware of Madame‘s sentimental attachment to those trees. But any and all of this – the cutting of the forests or the destruction of the crops – seems to me less serious than the pure and simple expropriation to which a categorical refusal would expose you. And in this connection my conscience will not let me forget the words your conscience spoke the day you decided to buy the Moulin des Sources, against my advice, when I permitted myself to invoke your son’s interests. I remember every word, and what you said does you as much honour today as it did then…. “My son,” you said, “will find it in his heart to forgive me when the time comes, and I shall answer for his future on my honour…. In compensation my devotion shall be limitless”!’

  Girardin had repeated these words of Solange’s in an exalted tone of voice, then he said very low, dropping his head as if asking forgiveness, ‘If I have allowed myself, Madame, to mention your son on this occasion it is not in order to remind you of your love for your son, but of what raises you even above this – your love for France. Absolute resistance is absolute destruction, and the country, in spite of the occupation, must and shall continue to live!’

  Everyone was silent, and now the rain could be heard coming down in torrents as though the sluices of heaven were being emptied. Solange had bowed her head, and with her hands held over her eyes seemed deeply absorbed.

  ‘What would the Count of Grandsailles have wished in this case?’ she finally asked.

  ‘The decision is too serious for anyone to be able to answer for him,’ said d’Angerville dispassionately, ‘but all of us here will be able to testify to your exemplary loyalty to your country, no matter what our decision may be.’

  ‘Madame… your son,’ said Pierre Girardin in a low voice.

  Then Solange de Cléda raised her arms, stretched them toward the vaulted ceiling and said, as if overcome, ‘For my son Jean-Pierre, and for the little wood I have planted, I shall consent to letting the Germans use my streams for their electric power. As God is my witness, may the punishment of heaven descend on me and on my error, if such it is, like this rain that is pouring over Libreux!’

  Now the violence of the downpour seemed to have increased two-fold.

  ‘If it keeps on raining like this,’ said Martin, ‘by tomorrow we won’t be able to ford the river to cross over to Lower Libreux…. For that matter, there is no chance of its letting up before the new moon….’ There was a long silence. The peasants of Libreux regulated the calendar of their well-being by communion with the profane hosts of their moons.

  But for Solange de Cléda all moons were full of gall! She knew now that her caprice in buying the Moulin des Sources had been a fatal error. This property would be her ruin and threatened to become her son’s, too, at the least flagging of her daily tenacity in personally managing her affairs. It was for Jean-Pierre that she had embraced this life of heroism, it was her duty as a mother, and this duty she had scrupulously performed in spite of the torments of her soul. Never had she allowed herself the luxury of indulging the anguish of her afflicted spirit except after those endless sessions spent in pouring over accounts, distributing alms, attending to the problems and needs of the three hundred souls that constituted the strength of that bit of the land of France which she was determined to preserve. And how many times Solange had slumped with sheer exhaustion in the hard chair of her torture, of her labour, through which she hoped to obtain from her guilty conscience the redemption of her initial fault! To the property of the Moulin, Jean-Pierre’s inheritance, she must make a total sacrifice. No! She did not have the right to die of love!

  As if after due reflection, Girardin at last broke the silence. ‘Listen to me, Martin,’ he said, going round and drawing up a chair close to him. ‘We are all going to have great need of you and your brother, for you are the only ones who are thoroughly familiar with all the little paths of Upper Libreux. Believing I was doing the right thing, I have perhaps committed one of the worst blunders in my life. Since the beginning of the occupation I have kept all the copies of the industrialization plans in the Count of Grandsailles’ family crypt. The plans are still there, rolled round a pile of candles stacked beside the small altar…. This coming week we shall have to get hold of all those plans! How shall we go about it, now that the whole area of the old cemetery has been included in the guarded zone? I know of no other way of getting there than by passing over the main road, which is also being watched by the German control post.’

  Martin was pondering and nodding his head.

  ‘Yet there must be other ways of getting there – shepherds’ trails…’ Girardin insisted in discouragement.

  ‘No,’ said Martin, ‘I have already got into trouble trying to take short cuts. All the passes and ravines are patrolled day and night. If you even go off the main road just to dig for a truffle you’re sure to be arrested.’

  Everyone, deeply dejected, seemed to be absorbed in listening to the rain, when Génie suddenly got up and went to pick up the broken handle of an old broom that lay between the front paws of Titan, who was slumbering at Solange’s feet. The latter had sat down again and her tilted head rested in the hollow of her hand. Génie turned to Girardin, holding up her broom-handle.

  ‘But Monsieur needn’t worry about those plans!’ she said. ‘To get them back is simple as daylight. All Monsieur has to do is to go to the Count’s crypt and roll each of the plans around a candle, like this – see!’

  Génie had folded a newspaper into a narrow strip, rolling it round one end of the broom-handle. ‘That’s how the big candles are carried, with a strip of paper rolled around it so that the wax won’t get on your hand.’

  Nobody yet quite understood, and Girardin objected, ‘But I can’t pass under the nose of the Nazis carrying a lighted candle in broad daylight without their noticing it.’

  ‘Why that’s just it,’ Génie exclaimed with an air both of triumph and of malice, arching her figure and resting her closed fist firmly against her hip, ‘that’s just it: in three days it will be All Saints’ Day. They said this morning at the market the Germans have given permission to let the procession take the old cemetery road to the Saint Julien hermitage, as it does every year, where vespers will be sung at five o’clock. There and back with songs and music.’

  ‘Now what do you think of that!’ Martin exclaimed, digging his cap into his knees till the seams cracked, ‘why, she’s right, Génie is!’

  Encouraged by the sly peasant smile that gave a faint glow to Girardin’s tense face Génie, comically parodying the march of the procession, began to strut brandishing her broom in lieu of a candle as she passed back and forth in front of Martin.

  ‘Martin is the Boche,’ she exclaimed. ‘Do you think he will ever be able to guess that the wax-spattered bits of paper we hold the candles with hide the contraband plans?’

  ‘There will have to be six of us to carry all the plans,’ Girardin rapidly calculated.

  ‘Me,’ said Martin, counting, ‘my brother, Génie….’

  ‘I too, of course,’ said Girardin, ‘it will be the first procession I have marched in my life!’

  ‘We’ll go to Saint Julien, too,’ Solange said to d’Angerville, imploring his consent with the first amused smile he had seen her face assume since his arrival.

  ‘Why expose yourself unnecessarily? Isn’t the danger you expose yourself to every day already enough?’ d’Angerville suggested, trying only half-heartedly to dissuade her and speaking, as it were, from the height of the walls of his melancholy, to which all access had been closed since Solange’s admission that she did not love him had definitively raised the drawbridge of his hope.

  ‘I want to go, dear,’ Solange decided. ‘If I have yielded on the main issue, I want at least to go on living by sharing the same anxieties and risks as all of you…. This All Saints’ Day before the coming of winter will be the first distraction I have had since I have lived here as a recluse.’ As she spoke Solange half opened her lips in a smile so strangely voluptuous that d’Angerville, astonished and disturbed, went and sat down close to Titan, making him rest his heavy head on his knees. From here d’Angerville watched Solange.

  What had come over her? Grandsailles’ letter had transfigured her, making her even more beautiful, though recently she had been surpassingly lovely and desirable in her grief. How was it going to be possible for him now not to adore her to the point of madness? A dog! Oh, just to be a dog! Old Titan!

  Everyone was already on his feet. It was getting late, close to half-past nine, and Titan in turn stood up. But Girardin, before leaving, asked Martin: ‘What did you have to tell me? You came to speak to me?’

  ‘Yes,’ Martin answered in embarrassment, ‘but what is first comes first…. It’s that the old man passed away this evening around six o’clock.’

  ‘Your father is dead?’ Génie exclaimed, making a sign of the cross before her face, while still holding the yellow broom-handle, with the lively movement of a ferret washing his snout.

  ‘Oh, we were expecting it! Five days ago he took a turn for the worse, and wouldn’t eat anything more. And he spent all his nights rattling in his throat and couldn’t keep in the bed – he would throw everything on the floor. And so strong he was! Like a wild boar struggling in a sack, with his feet tied. It wasn’t a pretty sight. The old woman cried and couldn’t sleep knowing he was there next to her, dying. Then my brother and I took her down in the stable.’

  ‘You made her a bed in the stable?’ Génie cried, wringing her hands in consternation.

  Martin dug his teeth into the edge of his cap and spat out a black stringy wad. ‘No,’ he said, no bed. And what harm is there in that? She sat up in her wooden chair the way she always has in the last two years. I tied her head fast to the back of the chair, and that way she sleeps nice and quiet, with her mouth open. Otherwise she would choke. It’s like the old man, she can’t breathe, but now she can’t bend her back any more, either.’

  ‘And as usual, with all that, no will,’ sighed Girardin reproachfully.

  ‘Come and talk in the kitchen,’ said Martin to Girardin, taking him by the arm. There he shut the door, went and looked suspiciously out into the rain through a little low window before he briskly drew the red curtain across it and kicked aside the white cat, that scooted off into a dark corner from where he could observe them. Then Martin drew close to the notary and said in a low voice. ‘The old man left us buried treasure. He explained everything to us two hours before he died. Be there tomorrow morning at nine, and we’ll start digging. Even between brothers, you never know. We need a witness.’ And, speaking even lower, ‘There’s plenty there, plenty,’ and almost inaudibly, ‘lots of gold!’

  When they emerged from the kitchen, Solange went up to Martin. ‘Tomorrow,’ she said to him, ‘Génie and I will come to your house to take care of your mother and watch over the body.’

  When Pierre Girardin and Martin had left, Génie brought a last cup of coffee for Solange and d’Angerville, and immediately after went upstairs to bed. It was as though the two of them had only waited for this moment to be alone together once more, but it also seemed as if neither of them was ever going to be able to break the silence, so great was the timidity that had come over them. In the end it was Solange who spoke first.

  ‘Listen, dear,’ she said, ‘I don’t want my telling you that I don’t love you to deprive both of us of the outpourings of tenderness that have made the bitterness of our lives bearable up to now.’ D’Angerville had taken her by the shoulders and made her lie in his arms…. Solange continued, her voice breaking into a sweet quality that was full of the echoes of childhood, ‘What can I do against a spell?’ Then, suddenly serious, speaking in her deep contralto, ‘For I believe in it, I believe in it now. I have had too many proofs that it exists.’

  ‘What does? Tell me about it,’ said d’Angerville in his most solicitous tone, as devoid as possible of irony.

  ‘There is such a thing as sympathetic magic-love spells… I shouldn’t dare to talk to anyone about this without fear of being made fun of, but it is time for you to know about the anomalies of my soul in order to silence your passion, were it only out of respect for it, for you know, without your friendship my life….’

  D’Angerville’s lips brushed against her forehead close to the hairline.

  ‘Oh, I know, I never need to be afraid that you will disappoint me! But now I must tell you, dear, that just as surely as you are here beside me, holding me, the Count of Grandsailles comes and visits me. And his coming, each time it occurs, is preceded by a long period of signs and portents which seem progressively to take possession of all my senses, to benumb and bind them, without my will being able to do anything about it…. That is how I feel it periodically come over me…. And its intoxicating approach is always marked by a kind of torpor. Then everything changes, becomes transformed, as if by a magic art, no matter where I turn my tear-filled eyes…. Each time it begins with a mere nothing. I suddenly notice that the colours of a partridge feather are pretty, and then each time I think of this feather the memory of it fills me with a pleasure which is inexplicable to me, but so vivid!… After this I may think of almost anything – a chromolithograph of a hunting scene that decorated one of the walls of my room when I was a child – and immediately the reassuring smiles on the ruddy faces of the riders produce in me an indefinable sense of well-being, of love of life. A thrill of illusion and delight goes through and through me. This is only the beginning, for presently it is as if all objects, even the most dreary and prosaic in daily life, begin day by day to be metamorphosed…. You see this hideous chocolate-coloured tablecover,’ said Solange, taking the material in her hand as if to demonstrate the revolting harshness of its colour, ‘well, when I begin to sense that Hervé is going to visit me, in this same colour my eyes begin to discover warm, golden tones shining in the depth of this brown… and this garnet-colour that I am wearing – well, it seems to become transformed into a flesh-pink.’