Solange looked up. ‘Even this vaulted ceiling which usually oppresses me like that of a tomb, when “he” is coming to me it begins to be delicately blue-tinged, like one of Tiepolo’s pale watercolour skies.’ Then Solage pointed with her finger to the relief that decorated the main wall of the refectory and said, ‘Look, Dick, you see – even that body of Christ which looks as if it had been carved with a hatchet and is all straight lines – well, when I am about to be visited it, too, seems to become smooth and appealing as that of a recumbent Saint Sebastien, and his tomb then appears to me tender as a young tree. And even the inscription, rigorous as death itself, no longer arouses in my soul the fear which those chiselled letters were intended to convey. This means that Hervé is approaching, that he is coming to visit me! And it is never in a dream! I never, never dream! It always happens in the daytime! It doesn’t matter where, nor when, nor in what circumstances. There’s no way of foretelling it. If at least I could prepare myself for him – but no! He is implacable, inflexible, and it is as a captive that I must submit to a pleasure which becomes as inexorable and categorical as this same inscription, which I could translate, “Love is rigid and rigorous”.’

  Solange extricated herself with difficulty from d’Angerville’s arms, and stood up, but immediately she seemed to get out of breath and, leaning against the table, she let herself fall back upon it with the full weight of her lovely body, and remained thus prostrate, her arms crossed over her bosom, looking up at the ceiling. ‘Yes! I am under a spell,’ she murmured, ‘and each time I am a victim of my pleasure I have the same single image before me and the same cruel scene is repeated before my eyes – the bitterest moment of my life, that of our separation, when the Count treated me with contempt. What can this punishment be that couples in my poor spirit the involuntary tyranny of my ecstasies with the brutality and the humiliation unjustly inflicted on me by the man I love?

  ‘Immediately after these visitations of Hervé’s it’s worse than ever and I have those death-wishes that you know all over again. Everything once more becomes dismal and contrary as before. This dress that I am wearing no longer has the lustre of flesh-pink, it again becomes the unmistakable garnet of a penitent’s robe, and this chocolate-coloured tablecover on which I am lying also reverts to that almost black and unrelieved brown in which monks are shrouded. The roses themselves reek of prison, and only the little greening tips of the cork-oaks prick my hope.’

  Without saying a word, d’Angerville forced Solange’s eyes shut with his lips and taking her in his arms like a child, carried her up to her room and laid her on her bed. Then crossing the long corridor filled with pools of water from the leaking side windows, he shut himself up in his own room and spent the night reading. From time to time he would shut his eyes.

  ‘It seems to be raining harder than a while ago,’ he would say to himself from time to time, and also, ‘Clédalism – a noble aberration…. God keep me from the temptation of trying to involve it with my own sorrow!’

  The following morning the sky was even lower and more overcast, but the incessant rain seemed somewhat to have diminished, and still there was not a breath of wind. In an upstairs room of the Martin brothers’ farmhouse, beyond drawn shutters, a woman from the neighbourhood was telling her beads aloud beside the body of Père Martin, lighted by a single slender candle planted in his two clasped hands. The evening before his old comrade, with whom he had used to go fishing every Sunday, had come to see the corpse.

  ‘Doesn’t he look as if he was alive – just natural?’ the Martin brothers had asked him. And his old friend had answered, after considering him for a long time in silence, ‘Why yes, natural as anything! He looks like he’s fishing!’

  Down in the stable old Mère Martin was mourning her husband, sitting ankylosed in a rigid blackish wooden chair, which one could tell by certain nicks must once have been painted blood-red. Mère Martin would often interrupt her sobbing to look open-mouthed at her two sons working, sunk to the waist in the manure, digging in the spot indicated by their late father – ‘under the third cow’. Suddenly Pierre Girardin, who was standing with folded arms watching this scene, came hurrying up to the hole, while he pulled his glasses out of their case and adjusted them to his nose; for the two picks, striking a hard object, gave off almost simultaneously a dry, metallic sound that unequivocally betrayed the presence of the treasure they were seeking. Throwing down their picks the two brothers worked feverishly with their hands to finish unearthing the chest that contained the treasure and that in a few moments was brought to light. The three men huddled round it on their knees and began to examine it. Mère Martin desperately raised her head in a futile effort to see above their shoulders without managing to do anything but stretch the muscles of her neck, like cords of lights of veal, and hoist her old Adam’s apple, hard, wrinkled and goitred, which remained immobilized in the upper part of that ravaged neck in a spasmodic contraction of salivary expectation.

  The chest that contained the treasure was of pewter and as large as a small suitcase. Its cover was not fastened in any way and closed imperfectly, so that in order to see what it contained they had to pull out a lot of earth that had leaked in. There they found a pile of several hundred gold coins, some of which were wrapped and tied in small worm-eaten sacks made of striped ticking such as is used to cover mattresses. To be sure, the treasure was not as fabulous as imagined by the four eyes of the Martin brothers, injected with the fire of wonder; nevertheless, for poor people like them, living on the verge of indigence, this chest which they had just unearthed represented a fortune that would enable them to live in comfort for the rest of their lives.

  ‘It will take us the whole day at least to make an inventory of all that,’ said Girardin, his eye gauging the complexity of the different kinds of coins which the chest contained. But the elder Martin brother had got up and, bracing himself on his two legs, began to readjust his trousers, carefully rewinding round his waist a long black cloth sash which had come loose with the unaccustomed energy of his digging. This done, he turned his head to his brother who was silently watching him, propped against the wall with his hands in his pockets.

  ‘Well, what do you say?’ said the bigger brother, ‘do we plug it up again? We don’t want to touch it, do we?’

  ‘I should say not,’ answered his brother, as if insulted at being asked such a question. He had picked up a shovel, getting ready to bury the treasure again, when Girardin, who had listened in speechless amazement, objected: ‘Well, at least we have to count it so as to leave a detailed inventory.’

  But the smaller brother, without paying attention to him, had already tossed the first shovelful of earth on the treasure.

  ‘Our father never made an inventory!’ said the older brother. ‘He lived his whole long life without touching it. In fact he added to it; all the little striped sacks were his. Well, we’ll do the same! But be sure you remember what you’ve witnessed.’ Then Martin spat into his hands and got to work. Soon the place where they had buried the treasure was once more covered with a thick bed of hay and manure, and the third cow nonchalantly went back and lay down in it.

  ‘Well, my friends, you are the true forces of resistance! The Germans will never be able to conquer for long a country that knows how to renounce and bury its well-being in the depth of its soil. They may possess and sully the body, but not the treasures of the soul of the nation!’

  ‘It stays in the family, anyway,’ said the smaller Martin brother, wiping his forehead with the back of his sleeve and trying with this observation to deprive their act of importance. The older brother, drawing close to the dingy light made even greyer by a regular curtain of thick spider’s webs, rummaged in his pocket-book and finally pulled out a white sheet of printed paper folded in four, whose black, worn folds indicated that it had done a good deal of passing from hand to hand. ‘Take a look at this,’ he said, handing it to Girardin, ‘I’ve just got one, and I have to give it back.’

  ‘That doesn’t matter,’ said the notary, full of curiosity, and putting on his glasses again. ‘I’ll read it here…. Ah, yes! I’ve heard of this,’ he purred, ‘it seems that some outlaws, “men of the maquis” have infiltrated into the mountains of Upper Libreux.’

  He glanced quickly through the document.

  ‘This is dated August, 1943. It seems to be a circular addressed to these men of the maquis.’

  He looked up at the two brothers. ‘Shall I read it to you?’

  They nodded. Girardin then adjusted his glasses a little selfconsciously, cleared his throat and began. His dry, official voice became warm and impassioned as he read on:

  ‘The Men of Maquis. Every man who applies to become a member of the maquis in the united resistance is not only refractory to the German labour requisition but is also a volunteer and a guerilla in the French army.

  ‘2. He agrees to submit to the very hard discipline of the maquis and to obey without question all the orders he shall receive from the leader designated or confirmed by the cadres of the organization of the maquis.

  ‘3. Until the end of the war he will forego communicating with his family or his friends. He will maintain absolute secrecy as to the location of hideouts and the identity of his chiefs and his comrades. He knows that every infraction of this rule will be punishable by death.

  ‘4. He declares that he understands that no special aid can be given his family without exposing it to his neighbours’ jealousy and betrayal.

  ‘5. He knows that no promise of regular pay can be made him, that his subsistence and even his arming are uncertain. He declares he understands that the slightest thing that reaches him will have been obtained and distributed only by a constant effort at the price of enormous difficulties and of extreme danger for all the upper cadres and the liaison organs. He will respect private property and the lives of French, allied or neutral citizens, not only because the existence of the maquis depends on a good understanding with the population but also because the men of the maquis are the élite of the country and they must give example and proof to all that bravery and honesty go hand in hand among true Frenchmen.

  ‘6. The feeding and clothing of the maquis may oblige us to order pillaging operations on shops, on the Vichy police forces and even on their warehouses of food and clothing supplies for national aid or for prisoners.

  ‘These seizures, which will be limited to what is indispensable to assure the subsistence of our members, will be executed by men selected with special care for their high moral worth. As soon as our arms-supply will permit, these operations will be carried out exclusively on the reserves of the army of occupation.

  ‘7. Naturally no distinction of religious faith or political opinion is made in admitting candidates. Catholics, Protestants, Moslems, Jews, or atheists, royalists, radicals, socialists or communists, all Frenchmen who wish to fight against the common enemy are welcome among us. The volunteer will pledge himself to respect the opinions or beliefs of his comrades. Tolerance being one of the finest French virtues, only the lackeys of Hitler have tried to invent fanaticism in France. Not only will the man of the maquis respect the opinions and beliefs of his comrades, but he will be to them a devoted friend, a brother-at-arms. Upon this the safety of all depends and this alone can make life in the hideouts of the resistance endurable.

  ‘Each one must forget his manias, his egoism and even his tastes. To sacrifice oneself for a comrade, to take his place at the task when he is tired, and in posts of danger on all occasions, this is the least that can be required of men in our situation. Never must one of our wounded be abandoned. The dead must be carried away and buried whenever humanly possible.

  ‘8. The volunteer of the maquis will be armed only when his endurance, his training and his discipline make him worthy of receiving one of our scarce and therefore very precious weapons. He must take the best care of it, keep it scrupulously clean, have it always at his side or in his hand, except if he must give it over to the armourer of the camp.

  ‘The loss of a weapon is punishable by death. This is a severe sanction, but it is indispensable to the safety of all.

  ‘The volunteer will keep his effects and his body as clean as possible. Upon this depends his physical and moral health, which is precious for the safety of the nation.

  ‘Every man of the maquis is the enemy of Marshal Pétain and of the traitors who obey him.

  ‘France lives and shall live.’

  ‘This is their rule and their law,’ said Martin with pride.

  ‘What are we coming to?’ Girardin sighed, moved but also troubled. ‘Shall we be able to avoid civil war after all this?’

  ‘Now come along,’ said Martin when Girardin had finished reading and given back the document, which Martin once more carefully folded in four and put back in his pocket-book.

  ‘Where?’ asked Girardin.

  ‘To the attic across from here. We won’t have to go outside for this. My brother and I have built a connecting passage.’

  Girardin asked no more questions. Preceded by the older brother they climbed up to the attic of the house. There, through a door hidden in a closet, they entered a corridor built of wood, through which they had to crawl on their hands and knees to the house next door. Martin struck an agreed-upon signal and added. ‘This is Martin!’ The door opened. Five men were in the room, smoking, and the one who had opened carried a rifle in his hand. The older Martin brother made Girardin sit down.

  ‘We have to wait a moment for the chief to finish,’ he said.

  While he waited, Pierre Girardin could not detach his eyes from the man with the rifle who had sat down right close to him, with a modest and shamefaced air. Feeling himself observed he seemed not to dare to raise his eyes to the notary’s. The man with the rifle had a wet mop of hair that completely covered his ears; and as it was parted in the middle it had the effect of a woman’s head-dress. His face was covered with scabs sprinkled with a sulphur-yellow powder. His muddy suit was so mended and dirty that it seemed woven of a conglomeration of rotting moss and filth. On his chest were glued remnants of spaghetti. But when one managed to meet his gaze one discovered the most beautiful blue eyes in the world, the eyes of an innocent, of a pure soul. And at this same moment one discovered that under this manure also was hidden the treasure of a heart of gold. The other men of the maquis seemed on the contrary and in spite of their poverty to be neatly dressed, wore neckties and had all shaved that same morning. Their chief was writing behind a small marble-stand and seemed to be protecting his hand from the latter’s coldness with a sheet of pink blotting paper folded in two which he slid along with the movement of his writing, controlling it with his little finger. This man had just condemned one of his comrades to death for having lost his weapon. The leader of the men of the maquis had close-cropped, grey-streaked brown hair that came halfway down his forehead, and he was only fourteen years old. When he had finished writing, Girardin went up to him. The leader stood up and cordially held out his hand.

  When his interview was over Pierre Girardin, still escorted by Martin, went back on his hands and knees through the wooden tunnel, came out through the closet in the attic and went down again into the stable. There he found Solange de Cléda and Génie, who had brought feather pillows and with the help of the smaller of the Martin brothers were settling his mother more comfortably. Girardin could barely wait till he had greeted Solange to whisper to her excitedly, ‘You must come with me. You can’t stay here a second. It’s dangerous for all of us. Please tell Génie, too, to join us without delay.’

  Girardin took Solange by the arm and held over her his large mauve peasant’s umbrella that supplemented the protection of her black woollen cape. When they were back in the dining-room of the Moulin des Sources Girardin said to her. ‘Some of the men of the maquis have come into Upper Libreux; one of their leaders has just asked me for an interview with you. I was unable to refuse, for this leader is none other than your son.’

  ‘Jean-Pierre-here?’ exclaimed Solange. ‘When am I to see him?’

  ‘When he gets back from a short trip, on All Saints’ Day, right after lunch. I thought this would give Madame time, if she wishes, to take part in the procession. Père Martin will be buried that same morning. We managed to put it off two days – that will enable us to get to the cemetery ahead of time and hide all the plans in the candle-holders.’

  ‘Jean-Pierre here!’ Solange repeated, raising her hands to her heart.

  The morning of the All Saints’ Day pilgrimage to the Saint Julien hermitage rose auspiciously without rain, though the sky remained overcast. At noon Solange de Cléda, sitting opposite the Viscount of Angerville, separated from him by the whole width of the big round table, was finishing in silence a light bread-soup shimmering with tiny grease-blobs and flavoured with rosemary. The sound of Solange’s spoon striking disconsolately against her plate made d’Angerville look up.

  ‘I can’t eat anything more,’ she said. ‘I keep thinking about seeing my son again… I don’t know what to think, I feel small and lost before him…. Shall I be able to speak to him as a mother should at such a moment and, at the same time, will I be able to hide the pride that I can’t help feeling deep down in my heart at his courage – to be so young, and choose to undergo the hardships of an outlaw’s life out of sheer patriotism!’