Solange now seemed to be in the throes of death and her clenched teeth were bared in a smile.

  The hooks that fastened her skirt had been torn off in the course of their wild ride. D’Angerville reached through the slit and felt Solange’s bare thigh burning his hand, while at the same time her breast was icy. One hand in heaven and one hand in hell.

  D’Angerville murmured a question in which only the word ‘want’ was audible, but by the way in which Solange’s stretched throat contracted in the act of painfully swallowing, he knew that the flood of desire had already submerged her will.

  He glanced toward the stairway, but she held him tight. She wanted it here, on this table of their abstinence, where for two years, at each meal, they had swallowed their desire the wrong way.

  ‘But never again!’ Her voice reached him faintly from the receding shore of the familiar world.

  Downstairs in the courtyard someone was knocking with his fist, and Titan barked, uttering raucous howls. When d’Angerville went down to open he found Girardin, Génie, the two Martin brothers and the other two peasants who had helped to carry the Virgin of Consolation on their shoulders. All of them held the extinguished candles in their hands and were waiting, gathered into a compact group, gnawed by anxiety.

  ‘I had to carry Madame Solange to her room,’ d’Angerville explained. ‘She seems very ill… she must have caught cold. Let Martin go quickly and fetch the doctor….’

  Everyone went up to the dining-room in silence, each placing the remaining butt of his candle on the table and immediately withdrawing, all but Girardin who remained to gather all the plans, rolling them carefully round the longest candle-stub. D’Angerville helped him in this operation and asked Génie to bring a glass of hot wine for Girardin.

  ‘I shall wait,’ said the latter, ‘to see what the doctor says.’ Then he added, ‘She must have been greatly upset by her son’s visit.’

  The doctor found Solange to be in an extremely serious condition. She was suffering from an attack of cerebral fever, and one of her lungs was severely congested. He left prescriptions and promised to return at midnight.

  With all the plans rolled under his arm. Pierre Girardin then went to the Château de Lamotte, where Prince always kept a room prepared for him on the second floor for emergencies when he could not get back before dark to his little property in Lower Libreux. ‘What a rain this has been, my good Prince!’ said the notary when the old servant came and opened the door for him. ‘Haven’t seen anything like it in ten years!’ Then he asked, ‘Much trouble with the roofs? On my house down below it will take us a good two weeks to fix the leaks.’

  ‘It’s already taken care of,’ Prince answered humbly.

  ‘What?’ cried Girardin, ‘the masons have already found time to come?’

  ‘In times like these,’ Prince explained as if apologizing, ‘I didn’t want the Count to have anything like that to worry about. I got five sacks of cement… Monsieur will perhaps remember that every Sunday before the Rochefort purchase I used to do the masonry on the little fishing cabin near the large sluice-gate. It seems the Germans are going to destroy all that now.’

  Girardin had removed his coat and his galoshes. ‘You’re wonderful Prince – you’re carrying the whole weight of this old Château on your own two shoulders. And that fellow Tixier the Boche agent has he been bothering you with his investigation of the Count of Grandsailles’ supposed suicide?’

  ‘That’s already taken care of!’ Prince answered, ‘He was found drowned in the course of a fishing “accident” – it’ll be just two weeks ago.’

  ‘And your son, Prince?’

  ‘Still a prisoner in Germany. But he says he will be coming back soon.’

  With a sudden sense of urgency Girardin said to Prince, ‘I’ll run up for a minute to the Count’s room. Meanwhile fix me a little something to eat – you know I like warmed-over dishes.’

  ‘I know,’ answered Prince, ‘I’ve been preparing some tripes à la mode de Caen for Monsieur since yesterday morning. I knew that the procession would end late and that Monsieur would not have time to return to Lower Libreux.’

  Once in the Count of Grandsailles’ room, Maître Girardin shut the door behind him and locked himself in. He immediately threw the roll of the plans on the bed, sat down a second in the chair beside it and after having rubbed his face with his hands uttered a long whistling sigh of relief. Then he went over to the tall mahogany chest on its Egyptian-style, long, narrow bronze feet. He opened the chest and took Saint Blondine’s little skull between his hands, turned it over, and in the middle of the occipital lobe found the inscriptions in India ink which he had copied there, in accordance with the secret instructions received in the Count of Grandsailles’ letter. He again copied the inscriptions on the back to his starched cuff and, making a line under the column of figures, he added it up just by way of precaution, to make it seem like a mere arithmetical addition, and then went and sat down at Grandsailles’ desk. Now there was the long operation of concealing each of the plans, gluing them to the backs of the maps of an old atlas. Having finished all these labours, Girardin put down the butt of his candle beside Saint Blondine’s skull, closed the chest, took the atlas containing the hidden plans under his arm, turned out the light, shut the door and went down to the solitary dining-room. The table was lighted by a masterfully chiselled naked Silenus holding a drooping, rough-grained candelabrum branch of oxidized-silver in his hand. Hovering like a benign spirit just beyond the sphere of light cast by the candles, old Prince was waiting to settle the chair ceremoniously behind him the moment Pierre Girardin, the notary, would be disposed to sit down and begin to dine.

  A few days later Pierre Girardin was in Paris. In the little room of a hotel on the Rue Vivienne he carefully groomed himself preparatory to paying a visit to the communist group with whom he had arranged for an interview. His shirt, elaborately patched and mended, especially around the neck, nevertheless had a detachable collar, shirtfront and cuffs that were flawless and starched like armour, and with grey thread and stubborn fingers he resewed a loose button on one of his gaiters, which dated back to his marriage thirty-six years before, and to which this span of time had imparted an indefinable greenish hue, having an affinity to that of the mould of certain mushrooms evoked in memory.

  Contact with these people whom he was to see, so oblivious of divine and human laws and of good form in general, was instinctively repugnant to him; likewise, and precisely because of this, he felt himself obliged to appear before them with the maximum of good form, for never so much as in the present circumstances had he felt himself become the symbol of the sanctity of property and the fanatical bastion of tradition. Respectful and devoted to republican institutions, but remaining a monarchist deep down in his heart, he execrated the internationalism and demagogic phraseology of people of this kind.

  After passing, through a number of intermediaries, by a long and devious route, he was led at last into a subterranean room, dingy and lighted only by a metal-shaded desk-lamp, where he confronted the ‘group’. Courteous and dry he spoke to them thus:

  ‘Messieurs, in coming here to bring you the copy of the plans on the basis of which the Germans have undertaken the industrialization of the plain of Libreux I am, as you know, only strictly carrying out the order I have received from the Count of Grandsailles. The danger to which I and several of my friends have exposed ourselves in order to obtain these plans is fortunately already a thing of the past, but in their behalf as well as my own I shall ask you to forget you have ever known me the minute I go out that door, and never to send any of your people, on any pretext, to see me in Libreux. Our common enemy is extremely vigilant, every move I make is closely watched and any indiscretion on your part might jeopardize you as well as us. If the Count’s orders should require it. I shall be the one to make the move and I shall come here again.’

  ‘You’re getting cold feet already,’ said one of the men ill-temperedly. He was leaning over the table where, without once looking up at Girardin, he had been continually engaged in writing.

  ‘Such a remark strikes me as obscure, to say the least,’ said Girardin acridly.

  ‘And yet,’ put in Professor Broussillon, who was more conciliatory, ‘the comrade said what he meant, and I shall now try to translate it for you in a language that is less brutal and shocking to your literary habits. The fact is that your bourgeois education – and it cannot be otherwise – is at the very antipodes of certain progressive laws of revolutionary ethics. It is Bukharin, I believe, who has formulated most clearly and boldly the principle that the free, though tacit adherence to any revolutionary action entails the duty to relinquish the claims of individual morality. Also in this connection, there are two long chapters in Plekhanov that are extremely enlightening in helping to understand that ‘empirio-criticism’, in the ethical and Hegelian sense of the word….’

  ‘Gentlemen,’ said Girardin, boldly interrupting him, ‘all this in my bourgeois education is included under one word – “honour”.’

  There was a moment of embarrassed silence. Then Professor Broussillon, assuming a friendly but bantering tone, replied, ‘Honour… that’s a fine word, but it rather difficult to find specialized treaties in which one may may read and learn about it.’

  ‘These things I learned from my mother,’ answered Girardin, putting on his gloves again with elegance.

  ‘Be that as it may,’ said the man at the table impatiently, continuing to write with all the airs of a bureaucrat, ‘goodbye, comrade! You’re a good fellow and the party will not forget the service you have just rendered it.’

  ‘I hope so – good evening, gentlemen!’ said Girardin, bowing aloofly to the group and preparing to leave.

  At this the bureaucrat flung his pen on the table, looked straight at Girardin for the first time, and exploded, ‘Look here, what is this reticent way you have of calling us “gentlemen”? In this room we are all equal and alike – comrades! Par exemple! And you really ought to be just a little afraid of us!’

  ‘Oh, what the hell, let him call us “gentlemen” if he enjoys it!’ exclaimed one comrade who was reading a newspaper in the back of the room.

  ‘Very well, then!’ concluded the bureaucrat. ‘Good evening, Monsieur!’

  ‘Good evening, comrades,’ Girardin answered imperturbably. ‘When I came into this room I did so as an equal, but I am leaving it now with the conviction that if you are comrades I am a gentleman and that if you are gentlemen then I am a comrade.’

  Broussillon bustled him out into the hall. ‘Never mind,’ he said, ‘from now on the common enemy can be counted on to lubricate the still squeaking social unity of the revolution to come. But we shall all be grateful to you for the rest of our lives, and these are just the trivial grains of sand of different educations. Don’t worry – we’ll keep our word, nobody will come and disturb you in Libreux. Thank you, thank you.’ And he pressed Girardin’s hand.

  After having spent several weeks in Paris, during which he received by letter somewhat more favourable news of Solange de Cléda’s health, Girardin returned to Libreux. The first thing he had planned to do was to go to the Moulin des Sources to get news directly, and to pay Madame a visit, if her condition permitted. But while he was still at a distance on the road Girardin was greatly disturbed to see a light shining in the night which he thought he could localize as coming from one of the windows of the Château de Lamotte. ‘Could the light possibly come from the Count’s room?’ He remembered so clearly having switched it off before turning the key, and the key was in his pocket! He quickened his pace and soon, reaching the last bend in the road leading out of the forest of cork-oaks, he realized that his fears were only too well founded. Perhaps Prince, having another key to this room, had had to go in there to see if any fresh leaks had appeared…. No, this was improbable. There had never been any leaks in the room. But imagine Girardin’s stupefaction, when he reached the Château, at finding the main door slightly ajar. The thought of robbers crossed his mind for a moment. He entered cautiously, walking on tiptoe, climbed the great stairway like a ghost, and entered the Count’s room. Seated at the Count of Grandsailles’ desk was a Nazi officer, flanked by two guards. In a chair facing them sat Prince, who got up the moment he saw Girardin enter. The Nazi officer was holding the skull of Saint Blondine balanced on three fingers of one hand, and with the other hand he was gently fingering a candle-butt. The officer had grey, dreamy eyes and a ruddy face. His very pointed nose was pale as if all the blood had drained from its tip, and it was precisely in the cartilaginous tip of this nose that all his ferocity seemed to be concentrated. A soldier brought up a chair for Girardin, and when the latter had sat down the officer began to speak to him in fairly correct French.

  ‘We need to have you furnish two explanations,’ he said. ‘First’ (and with this he tossed Saint Blondine’s skull into the air, adroitly catching it again upside down) ‘first, we shall ask you to specify the address written in India ink on the underside of this skull’ (and he pointed with the end of the candle to the minute figure that Girardin had recorded there): ‘second, where are the copies of all the plans that were rolled round these candles?’ and he cast a meaningful glance at the floor beside the desk, where lay a pile of candles that had been brought up from the cellar. ‘You paid no attention to the fact that wax is extremely apt to keep impressions, especially those of heavy inks and of engineers’ blueprints. Look yourself how well one can see the slightest details of the plan, pale though they are.’

  Girardin took the candle that was offered for his examination. ‘You’re quite right!’ he calmly answered.

  ‘Just one more thing that may reassure you: your charming and patriotic plan of sabotage has been killed in the egg.’

  ‘Well,’ said Girardin, ‘just try to imagine that my secret is composed of a tiny white box that opens but does not shut. An egg, too, you can break. The box, my secret, you will not be able to reconstruct, for my body and the secret are one. And inside you will only find a little yolk and a little white, a tiny bit of albumen, which is my poor little life. I make you a present of it.’

  ‘Good. Think it over,’ said the officer, seeming to want to put an end to this conversation. ‘It’s probable that neither of the two questions I have asked you interests us seriously as yet, and that we know all we need to know about both. Isn’t this one of the plans that you handed over last week, for instance?’ He opened the drawer and showed one of the plans delivered by Girardin, who could not help biting his lips imperceptibly.

  ‘In that case,’ he said, ‘why do you insist on my informing on my comrades?’

  ‘A matter of principle,’ the German officer answered icily.

  ‘Yes, I see,’ said Girardin, ‘the “principle of dishonour” – my principles are quite the opposite!’

  ‘In principle,’ the other officer resumed testily, ‘your execution is set for three days from today. This might be attenuated depending on the degree of sentimentality and delicacy you care to show those who have put you in this situation. You must know that we discovered the whole plot thanks to one of your communist protégés who could think of nothing better than to compromise you by taking refuge in the Château when we tracked him down.’

  ‘I couldn’t refuse hospitality to a man persecuted by the enemy,’ Prince excused himself, ‘and I couldn’t imagine that…

  ‘Shut up! We’ll remember that tool’ said the Nazi officer, getting up at the same time that the two soldiers were arresting Girardin.

  ‘I won’t speak,’ the latter said again as he passed through the door, and while he was being led away he muttered several times between his teeth, ‘Damn empirio-criticism! Damn the comrades! Bah! I’ll show them how to die like a gentleman!’

  It was told in Libreux that Pierre Girardin was tortured, but that he did not speak, and on the day they received news of his arrest the Viscount of Angerville, after confiding Solange – whose condition was no longer serious – to the care of the Libreux doctor and of Génie, immediately left for Paris to do what he could through his connections and influence to save Girardin’s life. But the date set for the execution of the Count of Grandsailles’ notary drew near without any news of d’Angerville. What could have happened to him?

  Thus it was that, with all hope lost, the day and the hour of Girardin’s death arrived. At half-past five in the morning the roosters were already pecking at the crests of the dawn as the firing squad brought Girardin out into an empty field surrounded by young aspens. Dew-drops formed pearls on the steel of the guns and Girardin’s gaiters were drenched from walking among the thistles. He was not afraid, but all at once he had to repress an impulse to weep-not for himself, but for Solange de Cléda and her illness; for he just remembered her and the fact that the Viscount of Angerville still had not returned and he feared the worst. Pierre Girardin then turned his head toward the Moulin des Sources.

  ‘Mon Dieu!’ he said to himself, ‘how alone and helpless the living sometimes are!’

  In the Moulin des Sources, at this hour, Madame Solange de Cléda’s room must still have been steeped in total darkness, for the light of day, just breaking, was too weak to pass through the cracks of the closed shutters. But through the narrow dining-room window without shutters or curtains this wan, crude light, oblivious of tragedies, the same that shines for the first time on the faces of the dead, was beginning with its moving shadows inexorably to invade the great refectory and the round table covered with its chocolate-brown cloth that seemed to grow larger as the dawn rose. The sky was again overcast and threatened more rain. Girardin let himself be blindfolded and cried, ‘Vive la France!’

  In the afternoon the weather cleared for two hours.

  It was like the most beautiful spring day. Great tragedies have always unfolded in a light of splendour that sets off the minutest details in sharp relief. The sun, the accomplice of all dramas, painted the six legs of each ant with the iridescent reflections of the landscape….