The month of

September
Frédérique Hébard
By M.S. Hashemi
A Luce, luce dell'amicizia
 One
IT was the end of August. We were back from our holidays and had gone to stay in our mill at Chauvry.

For a long time now the battered old wheel has ceased to turn above the stream. From the house the view
is spacious enough to make one forget the proximity of Paris, a faint blur of hills tinged with green, and
the restful expanse of the forest of Montmorency. In the garden there is a stone table. Here François and
I have drunk a thousand cups of tea to the turpentine smell of my paint-brushes, and between two
sentences in his novels. For the sake of the stillness, the green trees, the freshness of the air, we sleep out
at Chauvry from May onwards. We exchange the red sky of the city for the stars, and in the mornings the
sun wakes us through the open windows.

François is my husband. I feel it is because of him that I love painting the green banks and the bridges of
the Seine. I was twenty when I met him. Now I am twenty-seven. For six years we have laughed at the same
jokes, slept the same sleep, drawn the same breath. I am searching for more words to explain all we were to
each other, but happiness cannot be described. And here my story begins.

My story? It is the story of a month of September, a eeting moment of time, but the memory of it is part
of my being, and each year as the season advances, I never see the autumn sunshine without savouring
the bitter-sweetness of those moments when my heart beat so wildly.

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 We had just spent a month at Cap Ferrat with Eliza-beth, our daughter. Elizabeth was three years old and
had the most adorable character in the world. The sea air had made her as golden-brown as a little roast
quail. I spent all day mixing yellow ochre and white to nd the exact tone of her bare skin, as she played in
the garden. I painted her under the willow, in front of the goose-berries, beside the stream, in the meadow,
and I could never quite get that colour of freshly baked bread, never reproduce the dimples in her elbows
and cheeks. François came back for dinner. He leaned over my shoulder.

Elizabeth again?'

He kissed the back of my neck, my throat, my ear.

'Don't give Mummy all those kisses!' said the child.

I put away my brushes and went up to my room to change. François followed me and sat down on the bed.

'Well?' I asked him.

And he told me all about his day.

For the past three years François had been editing a special series of books at the Éditions du Siècle. It
was his present to Elizabeth at her birth and it enabled us to buy the old mill. We were no longer poor. We
had a child and a house. A stray dog came along. We christened him Aristide, and he never went away
again. The mill was a ruin and the rain came through the granary roof. François published a novel, Patrice
Levan exhibited my pictures in his gallery, and the mill was re-tiled. I painted all the walls, scraped all the
oors, polished all the furni-ture. A house that is cared for soon becomes part of the family. It seemed to
François and me that we had taken our rst steps there like Elizabeth.

During the summer, for love of Chauvry, François

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 arranges all his appointments between Monday and Friday mornings. I often go to town with him and we lunch
together like two students. He calls it courting me. But if it is ne and I am in good form, I stay at the mill and
paint all day.

Heavens, how uncomplicated our life was!

We knew we were happy. But you cannot say to yourself all day long as you look at your child, your dog,
your house, and the man you love: 'I am happy, I am happy.' You get used to it. And the words 'I am happy'
become a sleepy refrain which in the end means nothing at all, or nothing at all until the day the child is ill, or
the dog dies, or the house has to be sold, or the man you love no longer kisses your neck in the evening by
the stone table in the garden.

At the end of the holidays it was very quiet at the Editions du Siècle. Then one night as he sat beside me,
François said:

'Guess who is coming?'

"The Panther of Mantua!'

He laughed. I had guessed right.

It was Sandra Tiepola. Only one of her lms had been seen in France so far: "The Panther of Mantua.' In an
imaginary story supposed to have taken place in the Middle Ages a favourite of Prince Gonzaga's had been
the cause of hatred and treason. Civil war, famine, a cholera epidemic, and the clemency of the dying Prince
reformed the Panther who, in a tight- tting homespun gown, could be seen praying over a heap of bodies.

We had seen the lm before the holidays. It had been shown for about three days at a cinema in the Champs-
Élysées. We had not been interested in the lm, but in

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 Sandra Tiepola. She had been the chief topic of conversation at the Éditions du Siècle since Sylvain
Verneuil had returned from Rome with her book, La ragazza è la decima musa. All Italy had read the story
of the young actress's life, all Italy envied and adored her. The intellectuals maintained that such a
beautiful creature was incapable of writing, but her readers did not care. What did it matter to them if a
Romanian prince, an old school teacher, or an impecunious literary woman, whose names had all been
mentioned as possible authors, had written the book? It was signed by Sandra Tiepola just like the
photographs she sent to her admirers. Their numbers grew from day to day, but she was still only a
ragazza among the other delightful ragazze of the Italian screen.

To achieve real glory, her name would have to cross the frontiers, and be mispronounced by foreigners.

'Tll risk it!' said Sylvain Verneuil when he bought the rights of the book, but really he had no doubts at
all.

Although she was still unknown in France, she would no longer be so after her latest lm. Verneuil had
seen it at a private showing in Rome.

"She eclipses them all!' he said with the enthusiasm of a man who has put money into the business.

He planned to have the book ready by the time the lm was shown in France, and had asked François to
translate it. Thad always been amazed by the way he spoke Italian.

I did not yet know the importance this gift of his would assume in my life.

In crossing the frontier, La ragazza è la decima musa had become Sandra et le septième art.

"Thirty- ve lires' worth of tagliatelli, please!' This was the rst sentence in the book. Sandra Tiepola, the

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 fteen-year-old, barefooted daughter of poor Sicilian parents had just come into a panetteria. A
gentleman who was buying pizze turned to her and said: 'Would you like to go on the lms?' "Very much,' she
answered.

And that story was true.

Some years had passed. Sandra had an apartment in Monte-Mario, and her name blazed in neon lights
above the cinemas. She knew Punta del Este, Venice, Berlin, Cork, and Locarno. She had curtsied before
Royalty. She had dined with fat kings in exile, who were less distinguished than her humble father. There
was no attempt to disguise how poor her papa, her mama, her sorelle, and her fratello had been before she
made a fortune. Adored and lazy, they appeared on every page of the book, recuperating in hammocks
from Sandra's exhaustion. There was no question of love, just family and work. She ended by saying that
there was nothing more wonderful than success when it enabled you to make your family happy.

After he had begun the translation, François received several telephone calls from Rome. "The Panther'
inquired with anxious concern how his work was progress-ing. One day she telephoned:

'Arrivo!'

The next day she was there.

François' stories had never seemed so amusing to me as at that moment. Every evening his adventures
made me laugh a little more than the day before. I found it dif cult to picture the girl from what he told me.
My chief impression was that it was all great fun.

Soon we no longer called her the Panther', and without knowing her, I was won over by the feeling she
inspired in François.

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 We lived in such an atmosphere of happiness that it was several days before I noticed that François was pensive:

I rst thought he was worrying about the plot of a new novel. I asked him a few questions and realized I had been
mistaken. Then I thought being with Sandra had tired him; he was too patient, his kindness had led him to overdo
things. He did not talk so much of her. I looked at my paint-brushes and thought I was being sel sh. I decided to
go back to Paris for a few days; I would devote myself to Sandra and relieve my husband of some of the tasks
this obstreperous young woman was imposing on him. I would talk to François about it that very evening.

If I close my eyes I can see the scene now. I remember the garden smelled damp after a refreshing shower of rain.
It was the thirtieth of August. The rst log re was crackling in the grate. One of those exciting res one enjoys
lighting in the summer holidays. The wood was wet and kept spitting little green sparks. Aristide, whose coat was
soaking, lay asleep at my feet.

"What sort of woman is that Sandra?'

"What sort of woman?' repeated François. He thought for a while, then his face seemed to light up in the
re ection of the re.

"She's marvellous!' he said simply.

I felt angry and did not know why. I looked at my husband curiously.

"Is she very beautiful?'

"Very,' said François.

"Tell me.'

He began to laugh. He seemed happy:

There's nothing to tell you. She's beautiful, she's healthy, she's vivacious!'

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 I longed to throw myself into his arms and put my Trait in that on hi ho in, He oked

my hair absentmindedly. It was the way he stroked Aris-tide. And the same name recurred in every
sentence:

'Sandra, Sandra, Sandra...' Then he gently pushed my head away:

'It's late. I am dead tired.'

I remained alone with the dog. His eyes said:

'Aren't you going up to bed with the master?' Something had gone wrong with his world.

'He doesn't love me any more, Aristide. He loves a dark-haired girl who speaks a language I don't
under-stand.'

Certain details came back to me - he didn't tell me with whom he had lunch on Wednesday. It was with
her! He accompanies her everywhere on the pretext that he's her translator and represents her
publisher, but really it's because he likes being with her! The day before yesterday he came home at
two in the morning ... he was with her!

François! His way of making love that I thought belonged to me; his eyes, his hands, his mouth. In six
years I ought to have got used to the idea that it would happen some day. And now it had. That was
the explanation of his sudden melancholy. Perhaps he did not even realize yet what his feelings were,
perhaps he did not suspect that he was in love with her? I felt like screaming, running away, crying,
calling to François for help. Somehow I must rid myself of this torment. I could not live with the thought
of François in love with another woman. François in love with 'the Panther of Mantua'! How

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 ridiculous! But he didn't love her, it wasn't possible. But perhaps he was her lover!

I blushed like a young girl.

I took the dog to his kennel as I did every evening; I locked up the house; I drank a glass of milk in the
kit-chen. I opened Elizabeth's door, she lay there sleeping like a little animal. I stayed a long time in
the bathroom.

Then I crept into our bedroom like a thief; I hoped with all my heart to nd François asleep. I slipped
into bed.

'I thought you were never coming, darling?' I knew he loved me and I almost cried. His hand reached
for mine but only found a closed st. Gently he began to stroke my ngers. Beneath this familiar
caress my hand opened.

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 Two
THE following morning as I was lazily preparing to dress, I decided to go to the of ce and fetch François for
lunch. It was not a question of surprising him or spying on him. No, the night had dispelled my fears. I just wanted
to see him, to enjoy his smile when he saw me coming in, to lunch with him on a sunny restaurant terrace. Now and
again he would wink at me, he would put his hand over mine, and we would be happy. I would leave the house and
Elizabeth in charge of our old Hortense for the day.

I opened the bathroom window and the sound of water running into the bath was lost in the blue air of the gar-
den. Hortense sat in front of the kitchen door shelling peas while she kept an eye on Elizabeth who was playing
by the stream. The child glanced furtively at the house as she dipped her bare foot into the water.

I can see you,' called Hortense; 'you'll catch cold, you naughty little thing!'

I'm having fun and I'm not getting wet,' said Eliza-beth.

locks you come here to me, Ill tell you abour Got

Elizabeth left the stream and came skipping towards the house. I leant out of the window:

'Hortense, I'm going to Paris to have lunch with Mon-sieur.'

The old woman looked up.

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 "Will Madame and Monsieur be in to dinner?' hadn't thought about it. François might like to go
out, I felt like doing something crazy.
We shall probably come back, but I may telephone during the afternoon.'
I closed the window, but opened it again to ask Hor-tense to press my blue suit.
I took off my nightdress thinking it would be the rst time I had been to Paris since we returned
from our holi-days. I caught sight of myself in the glass, I thought I looked pretty and smiled as I
slipped into the water. The bath was wonderful. The sun shone through the window and danced
on the water, and I was getting ready to meet my lover.
My blue suit was rather too smart for the Chauvry bus, but it would be perfect for lunch, and
adequate for an evening out.
Beside the kitchen door, Elizabeth was listening to the story of Goldilocks. She looked up at me
and said admir-ingly:
'Oh, you're all in blue ...
I caught her up in my arms, kissed her, and then put her down.
'Have a nice day, Madame,' said Hortense.
"Thank you,' I answered gaily as I went out of the garden. A passing cyclist blew me a kiss and I
smiled at It was not quite twelve-thirty when I arrived at the of ce. Mademoiselle Reine,
François'
secretary, seemed
surprised to see me. François had just left to have lunch with Sandra.
"You've only missed him by a few minutes.'

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 I felt silly.

'He will be most upset,' she continued. 'Unfortunately I don't know where to nd him. All he said was that he
would be at the Gens de Lettres at four o'clock. I can ring him up there if necessary. He has a meeting..." I
did not listen to her. A few days earlier, I would have thought nothing of showing my disappointment. At
that time things had not been so involved, a missed luncheon with François would not have mattered. I
should have considered it just bad luck, and at four o'clock I would have telephoned to him and we would
have arranged to meet.

But on that rst day of September I no longer had the instinctive assurance of people who take their
happiness for granted. I made an effort to behave naturally, and the fact that I had to make an effort
showed me how upset I wás. It seemed to me that the François I thought I had known all these years had
suddenly become a very formidable person.

Mademoiselle Reine was silent. I smiled at her because she looked worried. I said:

"Thank you, Mademoiselle Reine, good-bye,' and left.

I had lunch in a brasserie which smelt of dishwater. I thought of nothing at all except perhaps of my wasted
day. I could have gone to Quai des Grands-Augustins to air the at. I ought to have called at Patrice's
gallery. I might have bought things for Elizabeth ... I took the bus home after lunch and stood all the way.

When I opened the gate at the bottom of the garden I saw Hortense and Elizabeth sitting in front of the
house.

The old woman was reading aloud. Elizabeth sat on a stool listening, her elbows on her knees, and both
hands

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 supporting her chin ... everyone in the palace woke up at the same time as the princess, and began to go about
their duties, but as they were not in love, like she was, they were almost dying of hunger. Hortense and Elizabeth
turned their heads towards me, even in front of Hortense I wanted to appear unconcerned. I said:
"No luck!' and laughed.
Madame didn't meet Monsieur? Monsieur will be very disappointed!' said Hortense, shutting the book of fairy
tales.
I bent down to Elizabeth:
Papa and I played hide and seek, darling?'
"Couldn't you nd him?'
"No.'
'Was he well hidden?'
'Very well indeed.'
'And now you're going to play with me!'
'No, darling, I'm going to draw you.'
"Again!' she said woefully.
But I paid no attention to her plaintive little cry. I wanted to make up for lost time. Soon the earth all around me
was strewn with torn sheets of paper. Drawing made me forget about her.
"Mummy, said Elizabeth, 'please, Mummy, I've had enough. Can I go?'
I was not doing anything worth while.
"Go and play,' I told her.
I could not draw. I sat there dreaming and my thoughts were not pleasant. I wondered if I should set a trap for
François; if I let him talk, perhaps I would nd out the truth. All I need do was to say nothing. It was very un likely
that Mademoiselle Reine would have had to

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 telephone to him at the Gens de Lettres. What would I do if he said:
'Thad a quick lunch by myself.'
'No, François, I know you're lying.'
Where did he lunch with her? And what did he do until four o'clock? I suddenly began to put away all my things. I
would say nothing, I would let him talk. I would soon discover if he were telling the truth.
But when the car stopped in front of the house, I was ashamed of my miserable ruse. I talked rst.
'I missed you by two minutes this morning at lunch
time.'
"This morning? You came to Paris? If only I'd known!
What time did you get to the of ce?'
"About half past twelve.'
'I'm very sorry indeed. Sandra came to fetch me. I took her to lunch at the Cascade. It's the rst day I've left the
of ce before one o'clock.'
"You went to the Bois?'
'Yes. As a matter of fact it's a charming restaurant. We must go there again before the weather gets cold. But
why didn't you tell me you were coming?'
'Because it was only after you left this morning that I suddenly felt like going to meet you?'
"Poor darling! So you had all that journey for nothing.
What a pity!' He seemed perfectly sincere.
'Be sure to telephone next time,' he said as he went upstairs to his room.
He seemed to regret my wasted journey. He hadn't been indifferent. There was nothing to reproach him with.
But I felt there would be no more peace for me, and that the night and morning had been merely a respite.

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 I had never before kept watch on François. We had no secrets from each other, and even our bad moods
proclaimed our love, which needed neither coquetry nor pre-tence. I would say to him 'you are a beast',
when he left his ties lying on the bed, or if he came in without knock-ing. But I meant, I'm happy to be
married to this beast?' In my unhappiness I felt myself becoming extremely cautious. Never again would I
dare to burden him with questions. "Now confess! Swear to me!' are the expres sions of a woman who is
sure of herself. I was afraid.

Afraid of knowing. Afraid of losing him. Afraid of this stranger I was in love with and who perhaps no
longer loved me.

Next Saturday we are giving a cocktail party to launch Sandra's book,' François told me during dinner.
She was always present!

"Is her book out yet?' I asked.

'It will be published a day or two before.' He looked at me: 'You'll come?'

"Of course, darling. What shall I wear?' François was surprised at my question: "It doesn't matter much.
Anyway you always know exactly what to wear?' It was true: until then I had always thought I knew. I
never asked him questions of that kind. But I was so tormented that suddenly the simplest things
seemed fraught with dif culties.

For the rst time since I had known François I did not tell him all my thoughts, because for the rst time
my anguish seemed to be justi ed. I had been jealous before.

But François was not the sort of man who is unfaithful to his wife in order to impress other people, and I
felt he belonged to me. When I asked him: Do you

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 love me?' it was because I knew he would answer "Yes.' When I really began to ask myself this question, I
kept silent. François spoke again:
'Verneuil is going all out. He has invited hundreds of people to Elysées-Matignon.'
"Where?'
"To Élysées-Matignon.'
'What on earth is that?'
"Don't you know it?' exclaimed François, as if he were grieved to discover my lack of culture: 'Well, it's a
sort of club for lm people, there are photographs all over the place. Everyone is talking about it ..?
'It's something new anyway!'
"I should say so!' said François, laughing.
I thought of the digni ed, conventional cocktail parties at the Éditions du Siècle. The buffet was set up
in the big reception room and the secretaries acted as daughters of the house, offering plates of petits
fours to groups of the select few. There were not many parties at the Siècle, and unlike other publishing
houses, only literary people were invited.
'But if Verneuil invites all those people, he'll have to spend his precious money?'
'He will even have to spend a great deal of it,' said François, 'but it amuses him. I think he would do
anything for her?'
'And would you too do anything for her, François?' I thought.
The day of the cocktail party I went to Paris with Fran-çois. I spent the morning in our at with the daily
woman.
I went from room to room in search of my memories. I had lived there for years with François, without
knowing

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 that on the other side of the Alps misfortune was brewing.
Could I call it misfortune? Of course I knew nothing for certain. I had no proof. I felt threatened, that
was all. I did not even know Sandra.
'Shall I clean the windows, Madame?' the woman asked me.
I was busy with her until lunch time. François took me to a little café round the corner. He was very
excited.
You can't imagine what a lovely dust cover they've made for Sandra et le septième art!'
'Have you brought me a copy?'
'I forgot. I have so many things to do today! But if you can imagine a blue background ...'
"What are you going to order?'
*What? Oh anything: I don't mind what I have ... with an adorable little photograph of Sandra. ...
'Shall I come and fetch you at the of ce later on?'
'No. I have to be at Élysées-Matignon very early to see that everything is all right. Come there about six
o'clock?' I felt as though I were being invited, invited by my husband and another woman.
After lunch I went back to the at. François was probably going to meet her. I felt feverish. I could hardly
wait to see her. I got out a coat and dress in a pale shell colour.
It was the same shade as my hair, and the silk gave a romantic little sigh at every step. A young girl going
to her rst ball could not be more nervous than I was. I waited until half past ve. I was afraid I might be
the rst to arrive, but when I looked at the card François had given me, I saw that the party began at ve
o'clock.
Getting out of the taxi I met Patrice Levan.
"Darling!' he said, lifting my sleeve and pushing back

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 my glove to kiss a scrap of skin, 'you look like a honey cake.' Patrice takes immense trouble to make one
believe that he loves women. He is among the last defenders of gallantry. As a matter of fact he enjoys
their company, above all if they are elegant and distinguished, for he is a snob. I was delighted to see
him. I am very fond of him and I preferred not to arrive alone at the party.
'Your hair, your skin, and your dress are all blonde.
You ought to drop everything else and sit in front of a looking-glass painting yourself. You'd see we
would make a fortune.'
Compliments make women smile and give them plea-sure. Patrice did not need me to make a fortune. I
needed him. He liked my being young and perhaps promising.
He was a gambler whose horses were young painters.
'Did you do some good work at Cap Ferrat?'
"I think so?'
"You must show it to me very soon.'
He laid a hand on my shoulder and we went into the Club. I saw myself in the glass doors. I was beautiful.
The little page-boy thought so too, and he envied the gentleman who was with me, not knowing that
Patrice would have preferred his company to mine. I smiled at the page-boy because I was beautiful. I
smiled at Patrice because he thought I was gifted. Life seemed gay, and I went down the staircase
towards the room from where I could hear the sound of voices. Then I saw her.
Against a background of green plants and owers stood
Colombine.
She was not as tall as I had imagined her, but long and thin, with a small waist, rounded shoulders, and an
opulent bosom, amply revealed. She had the dark skin of

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 Mediterranean girls and great black eyes, moist and pas-sionate. Her dark hair lay in little waves
round her face, falling in a single curl below her décolleté, which was very low indeed. A silver gauze
dress with a ballet skirt and an absurd bodice, a crazy dress for that time of day, indicated to
everyone present that she was the queen of the fête.

And there was François standing beside her.

I had not moved.

'I can already see the portrait you will paint of her,' whispered Patrice in my ear.

But Sandra's very perfection discouraged me. She was absolutely beautiful. Not in an inhuman way,
but with a striking and delicious harmony. Her beauty delighted the eye and confounded those who
might be ill-disposed towards her. I had never come across anything so undeni-able.

Just then she gave François a tender, happy look and put her hand on his arm. I left Patrice and
made my way towards them. François saw me and called out:

"Here you are! At last you will meet.' Sandra saw me and immediately knew me. François had no need
to tell her who I was. Her gay expression changed to one of serious attention. But almost at once,
Colombine reappeared. She went into ecstasies, held out her arms, and seized my hands. I
understood that she was saying I must be the most beautiful, the most charm-ing, the sweetest
person. She clasped my hands rmly.

At once I was under the spell of those eyes, that voice, and of that brown check, smooth as a
baby's. Dumb and inti-midated, it seemed to me that I was the stranger there,

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 'My dear, I'm going to steal our little phenomenon for a moment,' said Sylvain Verneuil as he dragged her away.

François was standing in the middle of a group, talk-ing. A young woman was listening and taking notes.

Patrice had disappeared. It was very hot and crowded.

Somewhere behind that wall of elegant, exhausted human beings I knew there must be a long table, set with
plates and glasses which were constantly being lled by perspiring waiters. I kissed women, shook hands with
men.

It was one of the rst cocktail parties of the season, and people were still glad to see each other. The women's
faces were strangely unrecognizable beneath their jealously preserved holiday tan. The intellectuals looked like
sportsmen. I heard English on my left, Italian on my right. A piece of wire from a radio installation got entangled
round my feet. 'Move over, please!' called two young men in blue jeans with a portable camera and an enormous
ashlight.

"You're looking rather thin, darling,' said a voice in my ear. It was Colombe Verneuil, Sylvain's wife. Intelligent and
spiteful, she dresses divinely, but one can never forget her weasel-like pro le. She can never forget it either,
which explains her aggressiveness. She is over forty and treats me with cold condescension when we are alone.

In public she talks pointedly about 'women of our age'.

"You're too thin,' she repeated as she swallowed a petit four.

"You are probably right, Colombe?"

'But of course I'm right! No one would think you had just come back from your holidays! You don't look at all
well.'

It was not true, I felt she wanted to annoy me.

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 'But you are amazing, Colombe! I don't know how you do it, you always look so young!'
My smile was too forced to deceive a woman as shrewd as Colombe. She changed the subject:
"Have you seen our new baby?' she said, pointing to the shiny copies of Sandra et le septième art displayed on
a shelf.
"Pretty, isn't it?' she continued. Although I adore Italian and mistrust translations, I must admit that François has
done it perfectly. He immediately understood that girl's character. You see a lot of her, don't you?'
"T've only just got to know her,' I said stupidly.
'Really?' said Colombe, who knew it perfectly well.
"You'll see, she's very entertaining. François must have told you so. I found her great fun when we were in Rome.
But only for three days ... after that she bored me to tears! Perhaps I'm being rather hard ...'
'Perhaps?'
Yes, I know, Sylvain is still under her charm! But men have a different point of view!' she laughed.
She had taken my arm affectionately as if she were about to tell me something pleasant. Her thin hand held me
in a vice:
*Until she was fteen she was fed on raw potatoes and went barefoot. She only learnt to read for her rst part;
they all think that is wonderful!'
"So do I,' I said slowly.
Colombe stopped herself.
"You're delightful!' she said, letting go of my art,
She smiled as she went away.
I glanced towards the group which surrounded Sandra.
François was holding her arm and introducing her to

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 Marie de Maurieu. Someone was asking to take a photo-graph. François wanted to move away,
Sandra kept him beside her. There was a sudden ash which illuminated François and Sandra,
leaving Marie de Maurieu in the shadow. She turned away, abandoning the photographer's lights
where she was not wanted. Once again I felt sorry for her. Everyone forgot that this tall thin woman
was one of our best writers. I had known for a long time through François that she was very ill, and
that if she often left Paris for the mountains, it was not only to write. I had always greatly admired
her, and I was very excited when, soon after we were married, François introduced me to her. I told
her this, and she received my compliments with a cold haughtiness that froze me.

For two years she never recognized me, then she resigned herself to my existence. Pale and
emaciated, she had what is called * a ne face'. That is to say, a face which arouses neither desire in
men nor envy in women.

François had a sort of affection for her. She often went to see him at his of ce, but she was never
free to dine with us. She came to my private views to shake hands with François and left without
looking at my canvases. Her contempt became less odious to me when I understood that I was not
its only target. Marie detested all women.

She found their presence intolerable, and denied their existence. She had nothing to say to us and
did not listen when we spoke. But in the company of men her face grew animated, and they never
understood why we did not nd her charming.

"Did you enjoy your holidays?' I asked her as she passed.

She ignored my question and said in a colourless voice:

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 'How do you do?'
I felt uncomfortable. She looked so ill that I ought not to have mentioned her holidays, and besides it was a
com. monplace, banal question to ask a woman who was al. most fading away with distinction. Suddenly I
realized that for the rst time she was looking at me, and I was surprised when I saw the keen, lively expression
on her
face:
'I think François is wonderful,' she said softly. Her eyes travelled from me to Sandra and my husband, then
returned to my face. Once more she murmured 'wonder-full' and smiled. I watched her walking away. Why was
she so malicious?
'Are you all right, my angel?' said François as he joined me. We found ourselves being propelled towards a gap
in front of the buffet.
"Two whiskys," he said to the waiter. 'It's a good party, isn't it?'
'Very?'
"Sandra's dying of thirst! It's terribly hot. Thank you,' he said, taking the whiskys.
"Would you like something to drink?'
"A little champagne.'
"A glass of champagne for Madame, please.' He was already gone, carefully holding a whisky in each hand.
An old gentleman tried to steal my place at the buffet.
He was thin and bent, he was probable hungry. I let him come in front of me. He feverishly began eating straw-
berry tarts. Ido not know if he was a writer or a journaliss
but he certainly lived by his pen; that is to say, badly. But
that evening at least it would bring him a few sweet meats.

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 I looked discreetly at my watch, twenty minutes to eight. I couldn't very well leave before François, and the-
party was far from over. People were still arriving. A strange-looking couple were coming down the stairs:

Biquet,

Patrice's intimate friend, and Inès Levan, his mother. She looked a hundred years old and still believed, in her
simplicity, that she had given birth to a little boy.

She had no idea of the sort of life her son led. He adored her, showered jewellery and furs upon her, and
would stoop to anything to get her an invitation to a masked ball. Beautiful, digni ed, decked out like an old
Marquise in a picture by Goya, she leaned on Biquet's arm.

Who was Biquet and where did he come from? No one knew. He had been living with Patrice for three years,
seldom appeared at the gallery, went out a great deal, and waited on old Inès like a young girl. Thin and
straight as only dancers can be,

he reminded me of an Egyptian cat

in his silent immobility. I have never seen him dressed in anything but a jersey or a dinner jacket. That day he
was wearing a white jersey embroidered with palm-leaves.

His beauty was accentuated by the whiteness of the jersey and his tanned skin. I had often painted his
portrait. He was a patient and charming model, but I always emerged in a state of depression after the silent
sittings with this smiling young ghost. I like people to talk about them-selves, but the sphinxes who surround
us are not always very loquacious. Somehow Biquet managed to nd a chair for Inès. People looked
admiringly at the old lady, calmly holding court amidst all the confusion and excitement.

I was making my way towards them when Verneuil stopped me. He took both my hands and turned me round.

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 "My dear, I haven't had a chance to speak to you with this crowd. I simply must congratulate you on the colour
of your dress!' I smiled. I'm very fond of Sylvain. He is a formidable man in business, but a sincere friend, and 1
pity him for having had to put up with Colombe all this

time.

"Congratulations," he said again, then he winked and whispered in my ear: "The day François doesn't want you
any more, let me know!'

He went away, delighted with his joke.

By nine o'clock nothing remained on the buffet table but cigarette ash and empty glasses. And in the room were
just a handful of people whose departure was anxiously awaited by the exhausted staff.

Sandra had taken off her shoes; with bare fect and owing hair, she had stretched herself along the arm of a
chair. She was like a little wild animal resting after its act. François must have had more than one glass of whisky
to make him so gay. Sandra smiled and paid me compliments, but I did not understand half she said.

'Sandra thinks you are a true Parisienne,' François told me. It did not seem possible that people who were so
much at ease could be guilty. I sat on the other arm of the chair and took François' hand.

"Tell her that I intend giving a dinner in her honour

next Tuesday?

He gave me a look of astonishment:

*But how will you manage it while you're still out in Chauvry?'

"Don't worry. Such problems don't count for a true Parisienne!' I said with a laugh.

"Very well,' said François, and he translated what I

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 had said. Again Sandra took my hands and overwhelmed me with compliments. There
was no need to translate.

I understood she was touched. Why was she touched? My invitation was normal
enough. Had she scruples? I found the contact with her hands disturbing. I turned to
Fran-çois:

'Let's go, darling, it's late.' He did not move.

"Are you coming?' I asked him.

He would have liked to take Sandra with us. He at least wanted to see her to her hotel,
but I decided to ignore this.

"I'm coming,' said François.

'Good-bye, Mademoiselle, I'm delighted to have met you. It was a marvellous party.
Don't forget Tuesday, cight-thirty at my house.'

Smiling, I shook hands with Sandra. It was her turn to be dumb and confused. I went
towards the exit without troubling about François. He followed almost immediately and
the heroine of the fête, barefoot on the thick carpet, was left alone with the waiters.

27

Three
SHE is charming,' I said to François when we were back in the car, 'and far more sympathique than you described her!'

'Did I ever say she wasn't sympathetic?'

'Well, you implied that she was rather trying?

"She is trying," said François,

but that doesn't prevent

her from being sweet and sympathetic. What shall we do now?' he added in a bored voice.

'We'll have some dinner,' I said, as if it were self-evident.

We went to a restaurant near the Champs-Elysées.

Neither François nor I was hungry. The food was quite ordinary, and the restaurant extremely expensive. I picked at my
food while I chatted to a silent husband. I had been mistaken when, a few minutes before, I had attributed his gaiety to the
whisky. His happiness had been due to Sandra's presence. I had wanted to take him away from her to a place which it
seemed to me she might have liked. And now that I was alone with him, I began to regret her absence. He became a little
more lively when I spoke about the party. We went away leaving our ices to melt in their glasses.

In the car I said in order to make him talk: 'T intend to give a grand dinner party for Sandra on Tuesday evening:

"It is very sweet of you, said François, 'but I'm afraidit will mean a lot of trouble, and you'll miss some of the last ne days
for painting?

fi
 But, darling," I replied, "you know very well that I must do something for that girl. You have all been wonderful to
her while I've been spending my time mixing paints like a beastly egotist. What will she think of me?'

'Oh, Sandra doesn't bother much about women!' exclaimed François laughing.

'Nor do I,' I said coldly.

'I know something about that too, old girl!' he said, tapping me on the shoulder.

Why couldn't I laugh as he did? I took refuge in the rôle I had chosen of a worthy young wife entirely devoted to
furthering her husband's career.

'Even if I don't bother much about other women, or men either for that matter, I consider I must occasionally do
certain things which might be useful to you.'

'But I understand perfectly, darling, and I am most grateful, said François rather grimly.

We drove for some time in silence. I was unhappy and I couldn't tell François. I slid nearer to him on the seat and
laid my head on his shoulder.

'My angel,' he murmured.

I closed my eyes.

I slowly crossed the garden while he put the car away.

The air was fresher than in Paris. That is one of the reasons why one sleeps well in Chauvry. But would I be able
to sleep that night in spite of the open window and the silence of the country? I had just nished undressing
when I heard François shutting the front door. I remained at the window while he was in the bathroom. The
curtain of shadow and silence in the garden gradually became less opaque, and I made out the shape of the
trees, the

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 round top of the stone table, the whiteness of the paths while the buzzing of insects, the rustle of leaves,
and the gentle murmur of the stream rose towards me. The door of the room opened. I did not move.

"François, I said softly.

When he was close to me I turned to him, clasped my hands behind his neck and kissed the corner of his
lips where the bristles, shaved that morning, were beginning to grow.

How cool you are,' he whispered.

I shivered, and he put his warm hands on my bare shoulders. I could hear all the sounds of the night and I
let myself be lulled by them. What did I care about the rest of the world and the phantoms conjured up by
my grief? I would soon be sleeping peacefully against my husband's shoulder.

"Ilove sleeping beside you," I said, closing my eyes.

You're asleep already?

He spoke as softly as the stream. He lifted me in his arms and laid me on the bed without breaking the
charm.

I thought: 'He's here with me,' as I felt the reassuring contact of his body.

This is a friendly house,' I murmured. I heard 'A very friendly house.' then his voice was drowned in my
sleep.When I woke up I was happy to think that I would have my husband to myself all day long. Elizabeth,
rose Knew that her Papa belonged to her on a Sunday. Sie ran into our room in front of Hortense who was
bringing us breakfast in bed. The sun and the sound of bells in Chauvry came through the open window.
The aroma of colice and boiling milk and the plate of hot croissants

30

 brought back memories of the innocent pleasures of childhood and holidays. In a red dress printed
with white ducks, Elizabeth stood near the tray. She waited until we were not looking to break off
the horns of the croissants.
From his place on the bedspread, Aristide watched us with his faithful dog's smile.
'As Madame gave me no orders, I'm roasting a nice little chicken for lunch.'
"How clever of you,
Hortense. Tomorrow morning
you're coming to Paris with us.'
"Me too?' asked Elizabeth.
*No, darling, you are going to stay with the Vergaux for three days?'
Daniel Vergaux was one of the Editions du Siècle authors. He lived in Montmorency with his wife and
two children. He was a wise man and hardly ever went to Paris. Our neighbourly relations had grown
into bonds of friendship. We often had their children to stay, or sent Elizabeth to them.
'Shall I see Belet and Cricri?' asked Elizabeth very intrigued.
Yes, darling. Meanwhile we shall go to Paris to dine with some very old and ugly gentlemen.'
'Pouah!' exclaimed Elizabeth, breaking a horn from a croissant.
"Who are you inviting?' asked François.
I did not want to tell him. For some reason I wished everything about the dinner to be a surprise to
him. He did not insist.
Hortense always welcomed the announcement of a dinner-party. She had a nephew who was a
waiter, and we employed him on these occasions.

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 Before lunch François went out to buy cigarettes. In spite of myself I thought: "He's going to telephone to her!

1 was annoyed with myselt, but L could not stop observing

him. If he scemed absent-minded I said: "He's thinking of her.' If he looked worried: 'He's bored with me?' But he
smiled at me. I smiled back and felt my con dence returning. I told myself that an innocent person, if too closely
watched, often gives the impression of being guilty.

In the afternoon he took Elizabeth to Montmorency and I took advantage of his absence to make several
telephone calls. At the beginning of the season people were not so booked up, and I managed to get the guests
I wanted.

On the Monday morning François dropped Hortense and me at Quai des Grands - Augustins and went to his
of ce.

By the time he came back for lunch, the house was clean, the curtains hung up, the table laid. He looked about
him, glad to return to his city habits. That evening he was home long before dinner. I was pleased to see him back
so early, although his presence hindered my work.

I was busy with polish and soap, restoring the shine to my old furniture, glass, and silver, and men are in the way
at such times.

"You're giving yourself no end of trouble!' he said, looking rather embarrassed as he watched me brushing the
carpet in the drawing-room.

It pleased me to see his embarrassment, and to know that the following day he would meekly come back to lunch
wich me so hay need not waste my time going.

out.

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 In fact on the Tuesday he arrived at about a quarter to one. We had lunch on a little table in our room.
The bathroom was full of owers. The house had an air of festivity which gave us quite an appetite.
François opened the door of the dining-room and whistled admiringly at the sight of the table.
'You must at least have invited the Queen of Greece and the Windsors!' he said.
'By the way, you ought to
tell me the names of our guests. I felt a fool this morning when Verneuil asked me what time we expected
them tonight?
"Well,
besides the Verneuils, there are the Bernard Robins, Patrice, Biquet, and Princess Bertenberg.'
"Who is she?'
'Surely you know her! Bika! She comes to all my exhibitions and you once dined with her at Patrice's.'
"Oh, yes! I remember. She's dreadful.'
I was seized with fear. Suppose the dinner were not a success! I had taken enormous pains over it. A
mere detail is enough to turn such an evening into a disaster.
Perhaps I had been mistaken not to consult François about the choice of guests. It seemed to me that
this dinner party was a test, and I dreaded the thought of failure.
When I was alone once more, I went round the house arranging owers. It was not a very beautiful
apartment.
The rooms led off long dark corridors built round an inner courtyard; but its glory was a magni cent
front room with two high windows overlooking the Seine, from where a little staircase led up to my studio.
The darker rooms were a lemon colour. Thus one forgot the absence of sunshine and also the lack of
money which had

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 prevailed at the time we took the fat. The wall wer covered with pictures painted by our friends. There were none
of mine in the house except in the studio. Someting a drawing or a canvas was allowed in the front room fora few
days. I did not hang it up, but left it on a low bok-case until it was sold or given away. This time I had

brought back a portrait of Blizabeth frorn Chaurry whien

I thought was the best I had done there. She was iting on a tree-trunk in a royal-blue dress eating bread and
butter. I stood it on a small bookcase, without a frame, like a guest. Then for some reason I turned it round and
put it on the oor, face to the wall.

On my bed lay the white guipure dress which Hor tense had just ironed. I could always rely on Hortense.

She liked perfection in all things. I went to see her in the kitchen where, amid sugary vapours, she was presiding
over a pile of stoned fruit and gaping poultry carcases, and would allow nobody near her but her nephew
Gaspard.

Madame should take a bath and lie down for an hour.

I will come and wake her.'

I shut the door on the kingdom ruled over by this de voted and despotic houschold god. I obeyed her, had a
warm bath, draped the white dress over a chair, and lay down on the bed.

Who on the bed me from a light dep with a cuper

'It is six o'clock, Madame. I have sent Gaspard to fetch some mild cigarettes because Monsieur is sure to forget
them. I also told him to get a few anemones for the tabe which I thought still looked a little bare?

I gulped down the boiling tea and handed my cup to Hortense. I had no more doubts about the succes of the

dinner.

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 I dressed myself with great care just as on the day of the cocktail party. François arrived home early. He
came into the room as I was spraying myself with scent.
"The house looks lovely with all those owers. You have taken a lot of trouble over everything?'
'Hortense and Gaspard sent me to bed and did it all themselves. Do you think the house looks nice?'
'I've never seen it like this before.' He seemed genuinely pleased.
I think foreigners should be received with great con-sideration,' I said sententiously.
He nodded.
'Shall I put on a dinner jacket?'
'I asked all the men to dress.'
'Biquet is sure to come in a turquoise jacket,' he said laughing.
"Let us hope he will!' I answered as I held out my wrist for him to fasten my bracelet. He did so and then
raised his eyes.
"You are very lovely?'
I smiled shyly. He was still looking at me.
"Did you remember to buy some mild cigarettes?' I asked him. "Now don't swear!' I put my hand over his
mouth. The divine Hortense thought of it?'
He kept my hand against his lips, holding my wrist between his ngers. I almost said: "Do you love me?'
but I was afraid.
He let go my hand and went to dress.
Before a party, the host and hostess have the choice of two evils, either not to be ready in time, or to be
ready too carly. That evening we were ready too early. We

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 walked about the apartment, from the dining room to the drawing-room, from the door of the kitchen to
the looking glass in the bathroom. François straightened a picture frame, opened or shut a window,
inspected his bow tic.I distributed ash-trays on tables, changed the position of a fower, dashed away to
put on some more scent. When the bell rang we met in the drawing-room.

It was Patrice and Biquet, punctual as ever. Biquet was not wearing a turquoise jacket, but a tartan one,
and when I saw them coming in together, I couldn't resist telling them how beautiful they looked.

We took them up to my studio because at that hour and season the setting sun leaves a rosy frame round
the stained glass.

Patrice was going through a portfolio of drawings, Biquet, a glass in his hand, was looking silently at the
Seine, and François was handing me a glass of cham-pagne, when I heard the princess's voice uttering little
shrieks as she climbed up the narrow wooden staircase.

"What a heavenly place! I've never been here before, but now I shall come every day. Darling, it's absolutely

divinel When I think that this is actually your studiol

My dear Levan, how lovely to sce you! I knew I was go ing to meet a Spanish dancer, but I had no idea that I
would have the pleasure of seeing you too!'

It was di cit to guess the age and nationality of the princess. Colombe, who had enge crossed a fronticr
with her, daimed to have scen her passport, and said she was sixty- ve, She was probably hardly more
than ty:

She was an elderly young woman, whose white powdered face and silk gowns rokoman, whost the Marquis
of Pril, The prince had died ase times it of a fall from a

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 horse soon after their marriage. She had gone through life alone in her black and gold Daimler,
childless, loaded with money, maladjusted, and benevolent.
She came in, draped in an ermine shawl such as one only sees nowadays in operettas.
"What a lovely dress!' she said, stopping in front of me.
'Who made it for you?' Nobody?
"Little minx!' she said, shaking her nger at me, 'I know you. Your wife is quite right not to give away
her good addresses,' she added, turning to François.
With her millionaire's simplicity, she put no malice into her words.
The party was enlivened by the arrival of the Verneuils.
But in spite of Sylvain's good spirits (for he had made up his mind to have a pleasant evening) my
fears returned.
I began to have doubts about the excellence of my wines, and the perfection of my brandade de
morue. The presence of Colombe made me uncomfortable. Her myopic eyes travelled over us and
round the walls with a gleam of malice.
Suddenly I realized that Sandra was in the room. Dis-creet, almost timid, she was dressed in black
velvet. The high bodice and modest sleeves of her dark gown gave her the look of a melancholy
young girl. My guipure lace seemed only suitable for a village wedding. The princess had planted
herself in front of Sandra and was staring unashamedly at her:
dancer?'
'Who is this wonderful creature? Is she our Flamenco
I saw Colombe laugh. Colombe enjoys herself enormously in society. Anything in the least ridiculous
gives

37

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 her immense pleasure. So she smiled in the manner oin well-bred woman who was taught hypocrisy at the
same time as spelling, riding, and the proper way to eat fal

"There is no dancer here tonight, Bika, darling it to the princess. I had taken Sandra's arm to introduce be.

Italian actress.'

Her arm was as soft as Elizabeth's. "But a ne young

It was usual for the Robins to arrive last. He was a in producer and had to keep up his reputation for bing
overworked. At ten past nine they made a spectacular entry. He was a big, red-faced man. As soon as you
sam him you thought: 'Here's someone of importance'.

Three years before, he had married the attractive daughter of the proprietor of a well-known apériti. The
innocent girl had imagined she would become a star, but her big husband gave her a baby every year to keep
her well away from the studios, where he preferred to perform alone.

We've just seen an Indian lm that was absolutes sensational,' said his little wife, lighting a cigarette. Ther were
only six of us in the projection room, it was rely awe-inspiring?'

"My dear, please excuse us for arriving so late, said Be-nard Robin, taking my hand and holding it in both of
his. 'It was essential for me to see that picture He did not let go of my hand for he was one of those men wis
imagine they give you pleasure by touching you.

I managed to escape from him to nish the introda tions. Little Madame Robin looked approvingly at sur dra's
modest attire. She herself was wearing a ren sua coat frock that would quite certainly be the fation in t

few weeks' time.

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 "Dinner is served, Madame,' announced Gaspard.
On the way down to the dining-room, Sandra undid the buckle on her belt. She took off a sort of bolero
and appeared in a low-cut bodice. A rosebud with its petals still tightly furled made a ash of red
between her breasts.
And that ower, warmed by her throat, quickened by her breath, proved to be the heart of our evening.
I am too fond of observing life to resent being made to suffer at times. I was perhaps the chief victim. But
I am never jealous of other women's beauty.
Each of us reacted in his own way to Sandra's beauty.
Only Biquet continued to stare silently at the Seine. Col-ombe and little Madame Robin seemed to
shrink with sad-ness. The princess went into ecstasies. The men said noth-ing, they just gazed. François
did his best to avert his eyes.
Our Charles X round table had been made oval. I explained to our guests that as the dinner was in
Sandra's honour, I was going to put her at the head. I placed Robin on her right, Verneuil on her left. I
realized too late that it was strange to see Sandra presiding opposite François.
Once again I caught a gleam in Colombe's eye. The princess was on François' right, Colombe on his left.
Biquet and I on one side, Patrice and the young wife of the producer on the other; we had the middle
places.
At rst the atmosphere was rather chilly. The princess could be heard exclaiming:
"What a divine room! What a gorgeous table! Oh, what a heavenly old dish!'
Like all those who live in a palace, she pretended to have a particular weakness for cottages.
said to Sandra.
I should like to make a lm with you,' the producer

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 She answered with murmured regrets.

absurdly protective way.

Our friend doesn't talk French," I explained in ao Alas! My words were unfortunate. From all sides of
the table came a stream of Italian. Madame Robin and i were the only ones who could not speak the
language. It seemed to me that the princess had a strong Russian ac-cent, but this did not disturb our
guest. In a few minutes the conversation became animated, there were bursts of laughter and Gaspard
had to ll the glasses. I cannot tell you what was said during dinner. Sometimes I caught a few words
here and there. My guests seemed very happy.

The crowning misfortune was that, having given Sandra my place, I had also let her have the electric
bell. When, after each course I was obliged to ask Robin to ring for me, I saw Colombe's mocking smile.

'But it's a pleasure!' exclaimed the big producer leaning towards Sandra. What an unhoped for
opportunity to touch Mademoiselle Tiepola's divine leg!' His wife wrinkled her charming little nose, and
I fel sorry for her.

François talked. The Italian language transformed his voice. He emphasized his words with gestures
and changes of expression that would have been out of place in French. How charming he was l e had
more warmi, less restraint than in his mother tongue. He seemed lie the husband of the dark-haired
young woman siting if posite who answered him across the table as if they satin the same places every
evening. And I could se the words spoken by Sandra's lips combining with those spoken bi François.

I would be lying if I said that no one talked in French

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 As we left the dining-room, Colombe said with an amiable smile:
Your hired waiter is very good.'
While I was pouring out coffee, Patrice continued to look through my drawings. I was just serving the third cup
when he discovered the portrait of Elizabeth.
"You must all come and see this,' he said.
It is only when he is in front of a picture that Patrice's face expresses something real. I looked at him. The
opinion of the others was of little interest to me. The princess groaned her admiration, the Robins went into
the polite ecstasies of those to whom painting is a bore, Sylvain had put on his spectacles.
"She is making progress,' said Colombe acidly.
'I simply must have it, darling,' murmured Patrice.
Look,' he said addressing Biquet, as if the rest of us were not there, look at this little golden body, that hand
holding the bread, the deep green of the grass, and the clouds ..?
"No, Patrice,' I said laughing, 'you can't have it. I could never part with Elizabeth.' Tll pay you anything you
like!'
sincerity.
The sudden brutality in his voice was a proof of his
jected Colombe.
"We seem to be witnessing a scene of corruption,' inter-
If only he had been there ...!
François had gone up to the studio to fetch cigarettes.
Give me the little shepherdess,' said Patrice, turning towards me. "You can name your own price. I shall hang it
in my room to look at every morning and evening, with its piece of bread and the butter smeared over its
cheek!'

41

 Smiling, I shook my head. I was watching the wooden stairs and I thought: François, you have no eyes for
toe any more. You don't notice your wife and your lovely little girl, and the thousand lovely little girls with
their cheeks smeared with butter that your wife creates for you in your garden.'

Suddenly Sandra noticed the picture. I had owed this brief respite to an adjustment in her make-up.
Kneeling in front of it, she improvised a song of praise to Elizabeth.

This was enough to focus attention upon her again.

'She is charming!' said Verneuil.

'What vitality!' said Robin.

It was all over. François came down, carrying a small box. The party got going once more with Sandra at its
centre. Only Patrice glanced from time to time at the Portrait.

Installed on the carpet, Sandra had slipped off her satin sandals. On her bodice the bud had opened into
a ower.

A petal was drooping, wilted by the heat. She sang and danced. She made us sing the choruses of
Bersaglieri songs. Never before had people enjoyed themselves so much at our house.

Sandra's only serious moment was when Verneuil fetched the rst press reports of the cocktail party from
his portfolio. She bent over to look at the numerous reproductions of her face, complained of a pro le,
got annoyed at bad lighting, went into raptures about a particularly successful photograph of herself.

I glanced at Madame Robin. Poor thing! She was unable to hide her discontent. I could well understand her
suffering, but I could not pity her stupidity, or her lack of self-control which was so obvious.

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 At about eleven o'clock she gave her husband a discreet signal for departure. He pretended not to
notice. He was laughing until he cried at an imitation of Toto that Sandra was giving him. His wife's
pretty, but stupid little face froze more and more. The princess was hot, her ermine stole had
slipped down, revealing her back. She had some spots. Colombe was smoking, as she watched her
with barely concealed disgust. Biquet was dozing gracefully.
The men had forgotten about us, they were all following in Sandra's wake. Patrice was enjoying
himself. At times I met his keen glance.
I got up to fetch a tray of refreshments. He came out to the kitchen with me and said:
'I want Elizabeth.'
I smiled at him. 'Elizabeth isn't for sale.'
Then he named a sum. A sum which astounded me. I had never sold a picture at such a price before.
"Are you serious?' I asked him.
He only answered: 'I want Elizabeth !'
His insistence did me good. I laid my hand on the silk lapel of his dinner jacket.
'Elizabeth isn't for sale ... but I like you very much.'
He bowed his head, took my hand in his, kissed it deli-cately, and said:
"You are a terrible harpy, my great painter, but a charming hostess.'
I knew very well that I was not a great painter. I also knew that the sum he had offered me was not
the real price of the portrait but of his caprice.
'You mix your guests with as much felicity as the colours on your palette.'

43

 *The evening seems to be going well, docsn't it shes fascinating, don't you think?'
'Who?'
He was amused.
'Sandra, of course!'
"She's an amazing creature,' he answered. "You must paint her portrait, and do some drawings of
her. But in the portrait try to get that amber skin with the network of blood pulsating through it.
She is extremely attractive!'
"Even to you?"
I regretted my words as soon as they were spoken. In front of Patrice I had never alluded to his, well,
what shall I call them; his peculiarities. I realized that I had shown bad taste. I blushed.
'Give me that tray,' said Patrice.
When they left, at about one in the morning, little Madame Robin had brightened up a bit at the
prospect of the scene she was going to have with her husband. He would get angry and afterwards
he would give her another child, which would keep the poor thing still further away from the world
of the cinema. The princess clasped me to her heart and said that the evening had been the most
wonderful in her life. After all, even the most outrageous compliments are harmless.
"Thank you, my dear,' said Colombe, brie y shaking my hand.
'Has everyone got a car?' asked Robin.
'T'll take Sandra home,' said François.
The guests protested. The princess slipped her arm through Sandra's:
"I insist on having the pleasure,' she said. 'I should

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 never forgive myself, my dear friend, if I allowed you to leave your charming wife in the middle of the night! I will
drop this radiant creature at her hotel!' All the would-be gallants were disarmed by this candid old woman. If I
had dared, I would have given her an extra kiss.
"Remember, my angel,' said Patrice in my ear, 'I want Elizabeth!'
On the doorstep Sandra stood still.
'Sono gratissima, è stata con me troppo gentile,' she said, looking at me. Then she managed to say:
'Meurci!'
Everyone began to laugh and congratulated her on her progress in French.
The door closed on them. I was exhausted.
*Well, there we are. A success, wasn't it?'
"A great success,' said François, yawning.
He took off his tie and went towards our room.
I was very pleased with the dinner,' I said as he dis-appeared. He turned in the doorway:
'So was I.'
He was beginning to get on my nerves. I collected all the ash-trays, opened the windows, and carried the glasses
into the kitchen. A few minutes later I met him at the door of the bathroom. He was already in his pyjamas.
'Please will you unfasten my dress?' He did so and patted my bare back.
Nothing went wrong, did it?'
"Nothing," he answered.
"Do you think she was pleased?"
"Who?'
'Sandra, of course!'

45

 *Delighted.You saw; she hardly knew how to thank you.' He began to laugh and said:
‘I hope she won't think all French people are like thou she met this evening.'
‘What was the matter with the French people this eren-ing?'
I was beginning to feel angry.
"Two perverts, one producer of doubtful honesty, an old lunatic, a viper, a little ...
"Timagine', I said maliciously, "that she must have been in her element. She won't have met any better
people at dinner parties in Rome, if indeed that girl is invited any. where in Roman society!'
I saw myself re ected in François' eyes. I stopped. He was sad and surprised.
I'm talking nonsense,' I muttered.
I thought:
'I must never again let myself go. Unhappiness makes one vulgar and I don't want to offend François.'
"I apologize," he said, taking my wrists, 'you arranged a wonderful dinner, and my only reaction is to
make stupid remarks.'
"Not at all!'
"Yes!'
He lifted up my chin.
'It was very amusing, it was very good, and I would have liked three helpings of the iced meringue. You're
very tired and I thank you for the evening, darling, but
' - he hesitated, then looked deep into my eyes - 'but Sandra is not what you said just now?
'I know,' I said, in a very small voice.

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 Four
FRIENDs can do a great deal of damage in a house. The opaline ashtray had been chipped, a glass broken,
and there were rings on the tables. Hortense helped me to put everything in order before she took the ve
o'clock bus to Chauvry. The Vergaux were bringing Elizabeth back the next day and François and I would be
there to lunch on Friday.

I was left alone in the house and sat down with a cup of tea facing Elizabeth. No, I would never sell that
picture. I longed to see my child, to hear her shouts in the garden, to kiss her rm, round arms. It was not
only a little girl eating her tea that I had before me, it was the re ection of my happiness at Chauvry. That
peace was far away from the turmoil of the city. What was I doing in Paris, when in Chauvry there was my little
Elizabeth, Aristide's bark to wake us in the mornings, the contented clucking of our neighbour's chickens,
the landscape ooded with September sun-shine, and my brushes waiting for me in their stone pot?

But on the bookcase, beside the picture, lay a pile of newspapers that François had brought back at lunch
time.

As I looked through them, I again saw the smiling cause of all my anxieties. The cocktail party had borne
fruit.

Sandra's face must have become a familiar sight to everyone in France who had read the papers that week.
And everyone in France could see, just as I did, that she and

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 the young man who was nearly always photographed with her, made a delightful couple.
'Her charming translator.'
"The sympathetic young novelist,' wrote the Paris now-papers.
"The fascinating young Italian star," said a Swiss maga-
zine.
'Her ancé!' stated a weekly paper.
No, my place was not at Chauvry.
I went to have a look round in the kitchen. Hortense had prepared a cold dinner for us. I laid the
table with care. Then I put on some trousers and a cashmere jersey with a black and gold pattern. It
was so tight- tting and moulded so exactly the shape of my body that I had never dared to wear it
except at home.
An attractive table, an amiable expression, a pretty dress. It seemed to me that this domestic trinity
could not fail to keep a husband faithful.
At least I shall have done my best, I thought.
There was still some time left before dinner. Vaguely I began to draw a vase of anemones. Every time
a car door banged on the quayside I ran to look out of the window.
I started to dial Patrice's number, but stopped before the end. He might think I intended to sell
Elizabeth. Sell Elizabeth! The very idea made me laugh. I must tell François what Patrice had
proposed to give me. I had forgotten to do so. It must be strange for a woman to earn a lot of
money; above all for a young woman. Usually it is the old ones who have the jewellery and the furs.
"That is all we have left,' they say. "You have your youthful com-plexions.'
If all my pictures sold for the price Patrice had offered,

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 I would become rich. What would I do with my money?

Happiness cannot be bought like a ring, but wealth is tempting. Women are better than men at seeing through
pretence because they are familiar with it. I tried to believe that François was more taken with Sandra's
exoticism and youthful exuberance than with Sandra herself.

I wondered if she earned a great deal of money making lms, or if she were kept. There were no rumours
about her, no man had followed her to Paris, and it was the rst time she had travelled without her mother.
However, this meant nothing.

A car door banged.

It was not François. I yawned. What was he doing at that moment? I had to talk to him. No subject should be
forbidden between us. I could not stay here like this waiting for him, every day, every hour, like Penelope,
dumb and without a tapestry. How quickly life moved, and how unpredictable it was! A month before, we had
been lying in the sun on the rocks at Cap Ferrat, and I was not even aware that my husband and I were two
separate people.

The electric light made me jump. I had not heard François coming in:

'What are you dreaming about in the dark?' he asked.

'I can't remember,' I lied, 'I must have been half asleep.' I got up and stretched rather affectedly, but he did not
notice. I tried to be gay:

'Do you know that I've been working like a Trojan all day. You won't nd a single cigarette end, a single grain of
dust, a single dirty mark anywhere in the house!'

'Good," he said indifferently. 'I say, shall we go out to dinner?'

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 I thought of the table already laid, of the anemones, of the delicious dishes Hortense had prepared:
Well, dinner is ready. There is a crab salad, and as we're not in for lunch tomorrow ...
Of course, I remember, the Charveys. What a good thing you reminded me.'
Besides, I can't go out like this," I added, pointing to my clothes.
"I agree,' said François, by the way, what shall we do about tomorrow? Shall I fetch you here, or will you
pick me up at the of ce?'
'I'll come to you,' I said as I went towards the kitchen. 'I havesome shopping to do in that direction.'
We had hardly sat down at table when I regretted not having accepted François' invitation. During six years
of life together, we had never known the meaning of bore-dom, and now suddenly it had come between us.
The weight of its presence spoiled even the simplest conversa-tion, and our silence was robbed of all its
charm. I dgeted on my chair:
"How are things at the of ce?'
'Quite all right. Has Hortense gone to Chauvry?'
"Yes, darling?'
'Anything new at home?'
Nothing?'
"Good."
What had become of our light-hearted
gossip, our
dreams, and even of our quarrels? I remained silent until dessert.
'Shall we go out for a drink?' I said as I got up from the table.

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 If you like,' said François. I thought of doing a little work, but ...'
*Of course, darling, it was just an idea. I also have work
to do.'
"Very well.'
He took a manuscript out of his leather portfolio.
I began to clear the table. When I came back from the kitchen the newspapers reporting Sandra's
activities had disappeared.
I took great trouble over the washing-up. It is something I detest. There was no reason for me to do it.
The porter's wife would be coming the next morning, I had only to leave everything in the kitchen. But I
meticulously cleaned the plates, the glasses, and the dishes. I rinsed them not only once, but three
times. I ruined my nail varnish with the detergent. Then, when all the dishes were on the draining board,
instead of letting them dry by themselves, I got out a clean cloth and began to wipe them. By the time I
had nished, it was a quarter to ten.
I went into my room to lay out the suit, gloves, bag, and shoes that I would need for lunch at the
Charvey's next day. I took off my make-up, ran a bath, massaged my face.
I was unable to relax in the water and got out to varnish my ruined nails. While they were drying and I was
unable to use my hands, I felt on the edge of tears. Carefully opening the doors, I went to nd François:
'Would you like something to drink?' He raised his head from the manuscript:
'What? No, thank you, nothing.'
"Is that book any good?'
"Not bad,' he said, and went on with his work.
I returned to the kitchen to make myself some tisane. As

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 I reached for the tin, I made a clumsy movement and rubbed a little varnish off one nger. This gave me
an idiotic feeling of joy. Once more my evening had a pur-pose: I would have to re-varnish the nail. I
drank tro cups of tisane and took a sedative. I went to bed thinking of those poor dogs who are left
shut up alone all day, and who go mad waiting for their masters to return from the of ce.

I was still fast asleep the next morning when François got up. I heard him say:

'I shall expect you just before lunch. Don't be late, little dormouse!'

I growled an af rmative. He planted a kiss on my tousled hair and went. I sighed and drifted back to
sleep.

The voice of the porter's wife woke me up:

'Madame, it is ten o'clock!' I had a metallic taste in my mouth.

'There's nothing left for me to do. Madame did all the washing-up,' said the voice with a hint of reproach.

I went to have my breakfast in the kitchen. I could not manage to wake up properly. When I came back to
my room the woman stopped me:

'I saw the photo of Monsieur in the day before yesterday's Parisien. He is a ne-looking man, isn't he? As
I was saying to my husband, they make a ne-looking couple!'

"Yes,' I said lightly, 'they're both very good-looking?'

'Who?' She was holding a pillow in her arms and gazing at me in amazement.

*Monsieur and the lady who was photographed with him.'

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 'I was talking of you, Madame," she said.

I was utterly astounded. If I had been happy, I should merely have laughed at the compliment. But at that
moment it was a priceless gift.

"Thank you, you're very kind,' I murmured. And I shut myself into the bathroom.

I suddenly noticed that I was singing, and it did me good.

We were going to lunch with the Charveys. We were not only friends, we were two married couples who were
friends, and our friendship formed part of the rm web of daily habits in which François and I were enclosed.

I began to take an interest in things again. I had a new strap tted to my watch. I took some shoes to be
repaired;

I bought a box of powder and a bottle of pink cleansing milk that took my fancy. I did not hurry because I
made all my purchases near the Opéra, a few steps from the Éditions du Siècle. Suddenly I heard a clock
strike half past twelve. I almost ran to François' of ce. I went up the stairs to his room, knocked, and entered.

François was standing opposite Sandra who had her back to me. They were not touching each other, they
were not talking, they did not move when I came in. I felt I had come upon something far more serious than a
word or a kiss. I bit my lips to stop myself from saying 'sorry'.

Sandra turned her face towards me and I read in her features the extent of my misfortune. Hers was the true
face of suffering. It seemed to me that I was the victim of a terrible injustice, for in this combat my adversary
had robbed me of my own weapons. I acknowledged Sandra's beauty, her brilliance, her success. I even
conceded the talent and personality which the world was still discussing.

But I would have liked her to resemble the scintil-

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 lating, super cial Colombine who had charmed me that rst day. It would have been a comfort to me
if la Tricola had owed her jewels to old gentiemen, her career to a producer who was in love with her,
and her success to her natural vulgarity.

But this was no longer la Tiepola. Instead I saw a sad and virtuous woman. And I who had thought
she was made for all the good things of this world, suffered bo-cause I was forced to admit that she
had a heart.

"I was afraid I would be late,' I murmured.

"That's all right, said François, 'we'll leave at once?' Sandra managed to give me a little smile, but
there was nothing bitter or mocking in the curve of her lips. We had not thought of shaking hands.
She turned to François and said something that I did not understand. He nodded and answered
brie y. She waved him good-bye and went towards the door. As she passed me she stopped,
looked gravely at me, and stroked my cheek with the tips of her ngers.

After she had gone I did not say a word. François put some papers into his portfolio and picked up
his water-proof. He opened the door and I went slowly down the stairs. He gave some instructions
to the porter while I sat in the car. I was waiting for an explanation from him. He got into the car, put
on his gloves, adjusted therear mirror, and turned on the ignition key. All this time I had not dared to
look at him. Then he leaned over to me and said:

"All set. We'll be there at about ve past one?'

The Charveys lived on the remnants of a fairly large fortune in an apartment in the rue Raynouard.
When we rang the bell there was always a scamper in the corridor.

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 The maid opened the door. Paul rushed forward, but his wife pushed past him to be the rst to embrace
us. Mus-tard, the dachshund, his long russet-coloured hair waving, jumped up on his little hind legs.
When an animal makes a fuss of a guest he shows better than anybody the friendliness of a house.

We had got to know the Charveys at Evolène, the rst time we had been away after our marriage. We
only realized they were French on the fourteenth of July, because in honour of the day the proprietress
of the hotel had decorated both our tables with little tricolour ags. We had laughingly exchanged
greetings to the acclamations of the Belgian, Swiss, and Italian guests. The following day Monsieur
Charvey had offered us a trout he had caught in the stream. We had invited them to have tea with us,
and we had made friends. Two days later they returned to France. But we met again in Paris and, in spite
of the proverb, our holiday acquaintance ripened into friendship. Perhaps it was the difference in age
that had brought us together. Paul Charvey was seventy and Madeleine about ten years younger.

"They look wonderful!' she exclaimed.

She scrutinized us as if we had been two cakes fresh from the oven.

'I must warn you, children, that there is nothing to eat!' said Paul. This was the way he always greeted us.

I had so often been to their house in my carefree days, that even the simplest and most affectionate
words began to hurt. I looked into a glass that I knew well. I was pale and drawn. But what did it matter? I
saw a dark head and a body turning slowly towards me to reveal a face whose suffering needed no
translation.

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 Your hair looks lovely, darling, said Madeleine, dip. ping her arm affectionately through mine as we went
towards the dining-room.

You are going to mect a family of dwarf soles and a very ancient chicken with rice,' Paul told me as we sat down
at table.

But even if the soles had been small, I could not have nished them. The faces of our friends showed conster-
nation.

*What's the matter, darling? You're not eating any. thing!' said Madeleine.

'She wants to wear her napkin ring as a belt!' joked Paul.

How was it they saw nothing? Their concern about us was con ned to those troubles which came from the
out-side. In their eyes we were always together holding hands like their portrait as a young couple, which had
been smiling for forty years in its oval frame over the mantelpiece.

T've been working a bit too hard lately,' I explained with a smile, 'it always exhausts me.'

"You ought not to allow her to overdo things,' Paul said to François reproachfully.

François nodded. He knew as well as I that I had not painted for almost a week, but we had reached the stage
when we no longer accounted for our actions.

At each grain of rice I was afraid of choking. The door, her dark hair, her face ...

'And how is Babounette? She must be as black as an olive after being at the seaside?'

'By the way, I have a little embroidered jacket for her that we got in Brittany. I hope she hasn't grown too fat
to wear it.'

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 If she cats as little as her mother, she can only be a
miniature child !'
It's true you're not eating enough, darling. Perhaps the sea doesn't agree with you? Next year you must go
back to Evolène.'
Next year? Evolène? I dared not look at François. The afection in their uncomprehending voices hurt me.
Don't think of next year, smile, eat every grain of rice on the plate.•
"Mustard," said Paul, Mustard, you old brute, have you inquired how Aristide is getting on? No, of course not!
D'you know this dog is becoming quite senile, it's a distressing spectacle. When I think that ten years ago he
was the pearl of Deauville.'
"How old is he?' I asked.
"He's just ninety-one,' he said solemnly.
'Dog years,
; explained Madeleine.
It was better to talk nonsense. So many things can be hidden behind a burst of laughter.
About three o'clock François got up:
'I'm afraid I must go,' he said, 'I have an appointment with the boss to sign a contract for one of our authors.'
'But you will stay on?' Madeleine asked me.
I'm sorry, but I have to call at Patrice's to see an American dealer.'
I regretted their disappointment. Left with empty hands in the middle of their drawing-room, they saw an
afternoon of entertaining talk slipping away from them. I would have liked to say:
'Don't be afraid, I love you. I shall come back soon; wait for this little cloud to pass.'
"So we can't keep you?'

57

 Tried to postpone my appointment, but it wasn't possible,’ I explained.

Next time you must bring Babounette. Ohl by the way, her jacket. Go and fetch it, darling, so that they con take it
with them. And don't work too hard, children, make the most of your youth.'

The ritual of departure took place by the front door.

Paul arrived, carefully holding the jacket wrapped in tissue paper.

"How kind you are,' I said, kissing them.

We promised to telephone during the week. We all kissed again. Then after giving Mustard a last pat as he stood on
the mat wagging his tail, François and I left.

'Shall I take you to the gallery?' he asked.

'No, leave me at the Place de la Concorde. It's so ne that I'll walk the rest of the way?'

'As you wish.'

We drove on for some time in silence.

'You're sure you don't want me to take you any nearer?'

'Quite sure?'

Silence once again. When people know each other too well, they can easily become strangers.

A gentleman leaves a luncheon party at a friend's house.

He politely offers to give a lift to a lady:

'Where can I drop you?"

'Don't let me take you out of your way?'

'But it doesn't matter at all ...'

And then they have nothing more to say to each other.

He holds the wheel: she looks straight in front of her.

'Some people really drive like lunatics!'

François had spoken.

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 In the car, the lady nods approval. She is in a hurry to leave her companion. Soon she will ask him to
stop by the kerb. She will hold out her hand. He will give a quick bow. And each will go their way.

"There in the corner by the bridge will be just right.' François drew up by the side of the road and
raised my hand to his lips.

I watched the car start off and disappear a few yards farther on. I felt very alone on the stone
pavement. I began to walk along the Seine.

But I did not go to Patrice. There was no appointment, and no American dealer. I had left my friends
because I did not trust myself. In solitude I could keep my secret, but with them, who were all
indulgence and all love, I knew I would have talked.

And that I did not wish to do.

59

 Five
NoTHING helps me so much to put my ideas in order and to take a decision as drawing. The soft point
of the pencil frees the mind and relaxes the nerves. During the week-end following our lunch with the
Charveys, seated in the garden in front of my landscape, I did not see the arabesque my hand was
tracing. On the white paper our adventure unfolded itself as if on a screen. The warning signals of my
rst uneasiness, Colombine's arrival, the rose on her black velvet dress, the scene in the of ce...I no
longer said to myself: 'Is there anything?' but 'What has really taken place?'

I was both troubled and reassured by François' silence.

He had told me nothing, he did not avoid me, and he would certainly not have brought Sandra to our
house if he had already decided that in one way or another she was going to enter his life. But did he
himself realize as yet what she meant to him? Did he forget her when he leaned over to kiss me at night?

At rst I had wanted to defend my happiness as an animal defends its burrow, and against me and my
rights I only saw wicked people seeking forbidden pleasures. I did not for a moment credit François and
Sandra with any consideration for me. Yet I knew I had right on my side, if only because of Elizabeth and
the ring on my n-ger. And perhaps above all because of the happiness that had been ours for so long.
But the possibility of suffering was not mine alone. I had seen the re ection of my own

60
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 despair on Sandra's face. She had come to say goodbye to him. My hand stopped drawing.

It seemed to me that they loved each other, that she was caving, that she was standing aside for me, that
he would remember it all his life. But I did not wish my husband to sacri ce himself in order to stay with
me. I had no use for a man who was only attached to me through a sense of duty and because he had
pledged his word. I was worth more than regrets. If François was going to spend the rest of his life with
me, it must only be because he loved

me.

Women in love know that ne sentiments are often merely an arti ce. I feared some new trick of Sandra's.

I knew François. A renunciation might attach him more securely to her than a show of eagerness at the
wrong moment. It would be petty and stupid of me to take advantage of so much subtlety on her part. I
wanted François back, but only if he came because he loved me and knew he would be happy. It would
be impossible to receive him from Sandra's generous hand.

In any case there would be no scenes, no cries, no tears, no questions. But instead of staying at
Chauvry for the rest of September, I would return to Paris with my hus-band. Instead of trying to repel
Sandra, I would do all I could to attract her.

After I had made this resolution I felt better. Perhaps also because I had been working. I gently stroked
the paper with its network of black lines. That happiness at least remained intact. No amount of worry
could prevent me from looking round me and reproducing what I saw.

It was about four o'clock. The weather was sultry.

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 François was correcting proofs at the stone table. I got up and called to him:

'Shall we go for a walk in the woods?'

'In a quarter of an hour,' he said.

I went up to my room to get ready.

The forest of Montmorency is our own forest. Its mossy glades, funny little ponds, and real wild boars can
soothe many a trouble.

To reach it we always walk slowly, for there is a stiff climb, and mountaineers know how to save their strength,
We can walk for hours together without saying a single word. Sometimes François tells me a story between two
cuttings. But it is wonderful to be silent in a forest. You walk quietly and listen to the life around you. A rabbit
springs from a bush to disappear with a ash of white tail behind a tree, like a sprite who has been taken
unawares.

A wild berry falling on to the moss reverberates in the sil-ence. The rustle of the wind in the birches carries
the spirit towards the north. And the imprint of a paw or hoof in the soft earth reveals the presence of
mysterious and fantastic beings who are watching you with bated breath.

As always, we turned round at the top of the slope to look at our house in the distance. The little dot on the
swing was our Elizabeth, guarded by Hortense, planted in the middle of the garden like a painted wooden
doll.

A thin plume of blue smoke rose above the roof. The faint sounds of cattle and farmyard were the only noises
to reach us. The lights of the city were far away. Behind the trees was the road which led to the desires and
ambitions of men. But nothing of all this turmoil and fever penetrated the wood, and its moss was as
untrodden as if it had been a virgin forest.

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 As always, François put his arm round my shoulder and we strolled on. The but their death was mot fallo.
patches, soft and supple, but their death was not far off.
Another few Sundays, and our feet would crush them as they lay dry and golden on the earth.
A mushroom! it was growing on a clump of moss. I gathered it carefully and kept its vehite stam ormy hand.
It was rm and healthy with its white stalk and brown
cap.
François began to search the undergrowth. But he never found mushrooms, except the false orange ones whose
red colour catches the eye among the greens and browns.
Kneeling at the foot of an oak tree, I untied my scarf so that I could carry more.
"How do you do it?' said François.
He suddenly bent down and picked up a brown stone which he rolled along the ground. A blackbird began to
sing.
'It must be because you are a bit of a fairy,' he went on.
'I see many things in the woods.'
"Not only in the woods,' he said softly.
My heart began to beat faster.
François,' I asked, while I knotted together the four corners of my scarf, 'do you believe in fairies?"
He looked very sad.
'It's dif cult ... even when you live with the last of them ... I must tell you ...'
'Oh! look!'
A mushroom had risen from the ground as if by a miracle. I took it out of the earth with in nite precaution.
François had stopped speaking. I knew he would say nothing more and that this was a good thing.

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 I stroked the little mushroom. It was tiny and would melt in the omelette without leaving a trace. No matter, it had
accomplished its task.

"Are Bernard Robin's plans for Sandra taking shape?' I asked François as we were driving to Paris on the
Monday morning.

I don't know,' he answered, 'but it is always a very long and complicated business to get a production started.'

'When is that remarkable lm in which Verneuil saw her in Rome coming to France?'

'I don't know.'

'I'd like to nd out if she is leaving at once, or whether she is going to stay in Paris for some time.'

"Why?'

He was paying great attention.

'She seems to be quite alone in Paris. Without her family, without a boy friend, without protection?' What about
it?'

*Well, it can't be amusing in a strange city under those conditions, and it seemed to me that it would be kind to
invite her out. For instance, we might ask her to dine with us somewhere this evening?

François was looking straight in front of him at the road. I knew he was not taking my invitation lightly.

And I told myself that I was mad to be even harder on myself than destiny intended.

"Very well,' he said at last. 'But …' he hesitated, 'are you sure she won't tire you?'

'Why should she tire me?'

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 "Because she's a bit overwhelming .. and then you are
so different!'
The difference between us would have struck anybody at once, if only on account of the colour of
hair and eyes.
But it hurt me that he even compared us.
But François, nothing has more attraction for me than the unknown!'
You are right. Besides, if you knew each other, I'm sure you would get on well.'
I felt like laughing. Men are completely artless when they tell the women who are ghting over them
that they must love one another. However, I was making progress in the art of dissimulation.
'If I didn't already like Sandra I wouldn't suggest having dinner with her. The party last Tuesday at
our house was a duty, the dinner this evening will be a plea-sure.'
It was to be a strange sort of pleasure. François telephoned to Sandra in my presence. Although he
spoke in Italian, I understood that he was stressing the fact that the dinner was his wife's idea.
Indeed it seemed to be this which made Sandra decide to accept. They arranged that we should
fetch her at her hotel just before nine.
At nine-thirty we were still waiting for her, famished and drooping, in our armchairs at the Royal-
Monceau Hotel. François was ill at ease. He watched me out of the corner of his eye, for he knew
my dislike for women with bad manners. But I had decided to be amiable at all costs, and
circumstances seemed to be playing into my hand.
"You see,' he said at nine-thirty- ve, 'she is rather unex-pected.'
'I think one rather ought to say
"expected", I

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 exclaimed wittily, but he did not join in my laughter.
Once more I immersed myself in a fashionable maga-zine, where I learnt that a granddaughter of the Hohen-
zollerns had played a remarkably good round of golf at the Johannesburg Country Club.
Would you care for a drink, darling?' François asked me. He had never been so attentive.
No, thank you, I'm not thirsty. Oh, darling, did you know that the Shah's representative had given a Lilac Ball
in Venice?'
"No,' said François, who was prepared to interest himself in anything to please me.
I put down the paper.
Does she always keep you waiting so long?'
"What?'
'Well, when you went out alone with Sandra, did she always take as long as this to get ready?'
'I must admit that she is seldom punctual.' I allowed myself a charming smile.
"There can be no worse punishment for you, my poor darling. Look where literature has led you! That girl is
amazing. I don't know how she manages it. She gets away with everything even where I am concerned.'
"Yes,' said François.
'Can you see me waiting all this time in the hall of a hotel for any other woman?'
"No,' said François.
"Certainly not. But this sherman's daughter amuses me in spite of her lack of manners.'
"Ah, here she is!' he exclaimed with a sigh of relief.
I thought 'already', and turned to face the lift.
A sort of glittering Christmas tree was coming towards

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 us. And I, who was wearing one of those little black suits, which are supposed to be correct for
every occasion, felt I was at fault. There are certain women, Sandra was among them, who set the
fashion. They can go to a charity ball in Backs, wear a cocktail dress on doe them. There es who are
right. No xed rules exist for them. There is only their mood of the moment translated into the image
they wish to present of themselves. Other women may say they are ridiculous, but at heart they
envy them. And when men smile as they pass, it is because they know they will never possess them.

Sandra rushed up to me with more excuses than I wanted. It did not disturb her at all that I hardly
understood Italian. Fortunately in many languages, the words used in advertising are of American
origin, and this was a help to me. She had been posing all afternoon for a photographer from Life
who had found her so photo-genic, so 'sexy', so glamorous, that he had only let her go at eight
o'clock.

'Così stanca! Così stanca!' she groaned with expressive mimicry.

"Tired,' translated François.

"Thank you. I guessed that. Perhaps she will want to go to bed early?'

In her turn Sandra had guessed. She explained to me that she was hungry and that she hoped to
amuse herself all night. I was afraid when I saw her dancing about, that she would begin to do the
Charleston in the hall.

But already she was pushing us imperiously towards the car. She refused to sit beside François,
and, getting into the back, she spread out her skirt and its ve or six petticoats without ceasing to
tell us all about her day. She

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 spoke so fast that I lost the thread of the conversation.

In view of the way Sandra was dressed, we had no choice but to take her to an elegant place. It was our only
chance of remaining inconspicuous. I had not yet found out that with Sandra you were never inconspicuous.

She entered the restaurant as a circus horse enters the ring. She paused on the threshold and surveyed the
whole room. She had a special gesture for slipping her mink stole from her shoulders, a movement of the head
for the head waiter, a smile for the manager who came hurrying up to her. She had made a success of her
entry. Conversation had ceased, and nobody would have any peace or be able to enjoy the chef's cooking
before they put a name to her face. The women had an air of dejection which, even more than the stares of
the men, con rmed her triumph.

She refused the rst table the manager offered us. She would have liked the one near the glass mantelpiece,
but it was already occupied by a couple. The manager was desperate. So was I. Sandra pouted exquisitely.
We were like castaways as we stood there helplessly, with every eye upon us. Suddenly she noticed an empty
table in an alcove. She went over to it, disturbed a distinguished looking gentleman, thanked him with so much
warmth that he grew as red as the rosette in his buttonhole, called us, and sat down with a sigh of
satisfaction.

The manager bowed gracefully over my ear:

'Excuse me, Madame, isn't that Mademoiselle Sandra Tiepola who is with you?'

I nodded, and the manager went away satis ed, to spread the good news through the room.

Sandra held out her arms to me and made me sit beside her on the ounces of her petticoats. Her name was
passed

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 from table to table, and, happy to be having dinner near the diners went back to their sole meunière

a celebrity,

and their tournedos with renewed appetite. When they learned that she was an actress, the women
lost all their aggressiveness. They observed Sandra's dress, her Floren-tie jewels, the bag from.
Milan. The next day they would say: Last night we dined near the lovely Italian girl everyone is
talking about at the moment. She's really very modest and sympathique?

Sandra could not decide what to order. Any food that was not Italian seemed barbarous to her.
She managed at last to get a chicken with pimentos that was not on the menu. The eyes of the
diners constantly returned to her.

Sometimes they travelled inquiringly over François and me. I think they took me for Sandra's
secretary. And they must have asked themselves to whom the young man belonged

Sandra twice sent her chicken back to the kitchen. The head waiter seemed delighted by her
demands. In spite of everything, I could not bring myself to dislike her. At times I even burst out
laughing as I listened to her. She talked without stopping, underlining her statements with graceful
gestures. I found it dif cult to follow. There was mention of her mother who was the best in the
world, of Roman parties which lasted until dawn, of a German producer who had offered her a lm,
of Schubert, her dress-maker, whose work-girls had spent three whole nights nishing a green lace
dress for her, of the elegance of Florentine ladies, of Milan, the capital of Europe.

How François must have enjoyed going out alone with her! I felt annoyed with him for having allowed
himself to be caught in this trap. But it was such an alluring trap.

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 Sandra was more dangerous than if she had been the classical type of a bad woman.
She aroused one's sympathy while remaining at the same time the sparkling, envied
actress. But in truth Sandra was not an actress. She was a product of the cinema. She
had no vocation. In its stead was the will to succeed, aided by good luck and a certain
application. The world was the stage on which she gave her perpetual performance.
Nothing is more precarious than the fame of these little masterpieces of human fesh.

Away from their re ections, the Sandras do not exist.

And the destruction that lies in wait for them makes their transit through life all the
more dazzling. My fame as a painter will never cause people to turn round as I pass,
unless perhaps when I am walking, surrounded by Elizabeth's children.

We were the last people in the restaurant. The manager was waiting discreetly, his
golden book under his arm.

Sandra had drunk a fair amount of wine. But it was not only the Tavel which had made
her so gay. I was certain that a few days before, she had been prepared to stand
aside, to give way to me. And I myself had called her back. I had reinstalled her facing
François. I had given her the right to ght, I knew she would make use of it.

Hostilities had begun.

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 Six
Ths following day at about ve o'clock someone rang the bell. I went to open the door and found myself
facing a joung girl. Her hair was divided into two plaits. Her face was not made up. She was wearing trousers,
a jersey, and a woollen cardigan. It was only when she opened her mouth that I recognized Sandra. She
seemed delighted at my surprise. I asked her in and told her to talk slowly.

She showed me a net full of provisions which hung on her arm, and said:

'Dove è la cucina?'

I took her by the hand and led her to the kitchen. She put her net down on the table and asked:

'Grembiale?"

This time I did not understand. But she passed her hands over her stomach and hips and made a gesture of
tying a knot. I fetched two satin aprons. She picked up one of them, took off her cardigan, and tied the
strings as tightly as she could round her small waist. She was altogether charming, and looked like a princess
in disguise. I quite understood the producer who had met her in the panetteria. No one could accuse her of
being sophisticated with her unpowdered face and her little girl's clothing which accentuated all her curves.
In her at sandals and without jewellery or furs, she appeared still younger.

'Fazzoletto, she asked, pulling her little plaits.

By means of gestures, she made me understand that she

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 wanted to put on a scarf to protect her hair from grease and the smells of cooking.

When her sleeves were rolled up, her plaits wrapped in a cotton square, and her trousers protected
by the apron, she emptied the contents of her net on to the table. She looked astonishingly
serious. This was no longer the insufferable creature who tormented head waiters, but a careful
housewife about to prepare a meal. For centuries, in her village in Sicily, the women had fed their
husbands with the same veneration. And this girl, who had learned that the whole world was willing
to pay expensively for the pleasure of seeing her, reverted to the slow gravity of the women of her
race in front of the bread, the oil, and the salt. She asked me if I was familiar with good Italian
cooking. I said I was not. She gave a whistle which promised a great deal and said:

'La Tiepola è una cuoca maravigliosa?'

By the time I had learnt that ham was prosciutto, onions cipolle, and grated cheese grattugia, it was
half past seven and we were bathed in a steam redolent of garlic and tomatoes. We exchanged long
sentences interspersed with laughter every time a word impeded our con-versation. I spoke kitchen
Italian larded with gallicisms, Latin, and French. Sandra shut the door of the oven on her escalops,
made me sit down opposite her on the kitchen table, and began to teach me a song. I had already
learnt the second verse and we were singing it at the top of our voices, when François opened the
door. The song stopped. We were enjoying ourselves, we had not been thinking of him. And
suddenly there he was. He considered us, and then asked me without much interest:

"What are you disguised as?'

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 'As coca italian, I answered. "You are going to cat cipolle al pomidoro and ...°
You can talk Italian now?'
"Thave an excellent private teacher," I said, pointing to Sandra.
'So we're having dinner here?
It seems obvious. We are not going to eat Sandra's cooking on the quayside!'
"Of course not!' he replied irritably. 'I only asked because I had no idea we were going to have an Italian dinner here
tonight.'
I didn't know it either, darling, it's Sandra's surprise?'
"That's ne,' he said.
For whose bene t was he enacting this scene of jealousy?
Sandra took his arm and said:
'François, sua moglie è una stella d'oro!'
"What am I?' I asked.
'A golden star,' he answered without enthusiasm.
'Oh, thank you! Tell her that she is sweet.'
'She understood you. Well, what about that dinner? Is it ready?'
Sandra said a few words to him as she pushed him towards the door. He gave me a look of distress:
She wants me to lay the table,' he said.
It was too good to be true! François has always detested domestic tasks, and since Hortense had been with us he had
done nothing in the house.
"Go and lay the table, darling, we are coming at once,' I said, suppressing a desire to laugh.
He went.
'Ecco!' exclaimed Sandra.

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 François put his head through the open door.
'Where are the plates?'
The glasses are in the sideboard.'
'In the cupboard in the dining-room, with the mats.
'Good,' he said in a lugubrious voice.
He disappeared again.
Sandra rapped her forehead:
'Vino!'
I called François back.
Darling! Go quickly to the Italian shop in the rue de la Huchette and fetch a bottle of Chianti.'
'Due, said Sandra.
"And the table?' asked Francois.
You can lay it afterwards, darling,' I said sweetly.
Very well.'
After his departure, Sandra sniffed her hands with disgust. I showed her to the bathroom. She took off the apron
and the scarf.
'Buona cuoca, ma bella donna," she said as she brushed her nails. But she refused powder and rouge. She inhaled
my scent while I was spraying myself and pronounced it too young for her. This child with plaits was pathetic with
her vamp's principles. François had come back, and I expected a clatter of broken dishes. But he broke noth-ing.
He only forgot the glasses, the salt, the pepper, and the bread.
'Andiamo a tavola!' exclaimed Sandra, placing the casserole on the table.
It was abundant, strange, and highly spiced. The cuoca watched us out of the corner of her eye, and replenished
our plates after every mouthful. If we had not appreciated her cooking, I think she would have cried. Fortunately

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 cie bates of Chianti helped to wash down the fresh goodles and gave the conversation a jovial tone.

"Sandra d una stella d'oro, I said, as I attacked my second escalop.

She clapped her hands and raised her glass to drink my health. Our gaiety had infected François. He was no
longer sulking at the spectacle of our affectionate collabo-ration. I asked Sandra if she would like to come with
me to a private view the next day. She eagerly accepted. I hummed the song she had taught me in the kitchen.

"Braval' she encouraged me.

Then she turned to François and said something to him.

Ionly caught the words river-boat'.

What does she want with the river-boat?' I asked.

"She wants me to try to remember a song she heard on the river-boat.'

'How could you remember it since it was she who heard it?'

'She heard it one evening when we had dinner together on the river-boat,' said François without looking at me.

The truce was over. I no longer heard Sandra's chatter.

I saw an illuminated boat cleaving the dark waters of the Seine carrying lovers to Saint-Cloud. When we were
very poor we sometimes said: 'One day we'll go on the river-boat, we'll throw crumbs to the sh and gulls and
we'll pretend to be two sailors.' When the money was there, time was lacking. But often, when the little boat
passed beneath our windows, we promised ourselves to go and have dinner on the water one evening. And now
François had been without me. He realized its signi cance since he had not mentioned it to me. If he had come
back to Chauvry one night and said: 'I had dinner on the

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 river boat with the Panther; I should have been upe, bur the wound would soon have healed.

All the same, I knew that Parisians only get to know their own city through foreigners. If it had not
been foe my cousin from La Rochelle, I would never have gone up to the top of the Bi el Tower. It
was all very well for me to tell myself that it was just as normal for Sandra to go on the Seine with
François. I was jealous of their compli-city. Besides purely physical jealousy, there is the jealousy of
the countless little things in life. I was jealous of that river-boat, of their table on the bridge, of the
Ile Saint-Louis, of Notre Dame, of Vert-Galant, of the stone arches, of the pediments in the Place
de la Concorde, and of the song that Sandra was still trying to remember.

'Non ricordo più,' said François.

I was too distressed to be grateful for his tact. I let them go on talking and got up to clear the table.
Everything had resumed its true proportions. I realized that it was not enough to open one's arms to
another woman for her to cease to be dangerous. Had Sandra mentioned the river-boat only to
test me? The Italian food lay heavy on my stomach. But now I had to play to the bitter end the part I
had chosen. The door opened and Sandra came in with the basket of fruit and the glasses. She
gently scolded me for doing all the work alone. I smiled at her when she snatched the coffee pot
from my hands. She sniffed the coffee sceptically and said:

"The coffee, in Italy. marvellous!'

Nevertheless she drank it, while explaining that she must leave early because the next morning she
was going to Joinville to make some tests for Robin's lm. Most of the scenes would be shot in the
Alps that winter.

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 She hadn't yet signed the contract,she was waiting for herlates lm to be shown in Paris to raise her
price.

Many millions! Many millions!' she repeated as she shook her little plaits about her childlike face.

Tasked her if the famous lm was soon coming to Paris.

She replied that there was going to be a gala performance towards the end of the month. Then she got
up. She asked me to call for her the next day at about four o'clock. I was relieved to see her go. But at
the thought that François was going to accompany her home my jealousy returned.

I waited to be invited to go with them. The suggestion did not come. On the doorstep Sandra kissed me
affection-ately.

I remained alone trying not to work out how long François needed to take her to her hotel. In any case I
had plenty to think about. I could not forget the river-boat. I had caught them in the act of being happy
together. There was nothing to prove that Sandra's exquisite body and François', which I knew by heart,
had belonged to one another. I knew they had tasted the innocent pleasure of breathing the same air.
And I could not forgive François for the wine he had shared with her at a table where there was no glass
for me.

He was back so soon that I was startled when I saw him.

We did not allude to the river-boat, neither did we speak of Sandra. But just as we were going to bed,
Fran-fois asked me to get him a glass of bicarbonate of soda.

"For', he said, 'I do not trust cooking that is done in oil.' I went into the bathroom and hunted in the
cupboard, humming a little tune to myself, animated by a vague feeling of national solidarity.

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 Seven
As I was early for our appointment I walked up the rue Saint-Honoré. There was no hurry, and I had
time to stop in front of the world's most beautiful shop windows. Stuffed does, corseted in violet
skins and crowned with tiaras, gazed at the crowd with women's eyes. Bottles of scent in their satin-
quilted cof ns had poetical names. Naked on black velvet, a diamond glittered, laden with drama,
This was the abode of luxury, the place where anything could be bought at a price. I had often
longed to be one of those tourists with their arms full of parcels whom one meets between the Place
Vendôme and the Élysée, and imagined myself returning in the evening to a ve-star

At four o'clock I arrived at the Royal-Monceau. Natur ally Sandra was not ready, but the clerk at the
reception desk asked me to go up to her room.

'If ever I'm in Paris as a tourist, this is where I shall stay,' I decided in the lift.

The whole place was warm, padded, discreet, be- owered, mellow, and comfortable. The staff was
smiling, the carpets thick, the lighting soft.

The lift boy accompanied me as far as the vestibule of the suite. I went into a small sitting-room
crowded with trunks, then into an empty room. I mean it was empty of Sandra's presence. The bed
was unmade, bunches of clothing protruded from the chest of drawers, the tables were littered with
bottles, vaporizers, tubes, and pots of

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 cream. looked for somewhere to sit. On every chair there were dresses with their petticoats in the air. I
sat down on the bed. Sandra's voice welcomed me from the bathroom. Some Italian magazines lay about
on the un-ridy bed-clothes. All the windows were shut and Sandra's perfume pervaded the room.

Hallo, my beautiful one," said her voice beside me.

Ihad not heard her approaching in her golden Turkish slippers. She was wearing a négligé and a pleated
nylon nightgown which was so transparent that thenceforth I could have drawn her body from memory.
She explained that she had been lming all the morning in Joinville and had been so tired that she had
gone to sleep after lunch.

She plugged in a gramophone, placed a box of sweets and a packet of cigarettes in front of me, took an
armful of nylon out of a suitcase, and returned to the bathroom.

'Ti voglio bene, tanto bene', sang the gramophone. It was on the oor, and the voice seemed to come
from under the bed. Everything that surrounded me was so intimate and feminine that I felt ill at ease.
Had François been here? Had he been received in this fascinating disorder?

Even I was aware of the charm of this room, with its cupboards half open revealing the furs inside, the
jewels lying about everywhere, the big rumpled bed. Disorder, to be attractive, must be luxurious.

"Many millions, many millions,' Sandra had told us.

She was a sensible business-woman. Everything she did was carefully planned. If she had to spend a
fortune on that suite of rooms, it was not out of extravagance, but from the necessity of maintaining
certain standards. In such surroundings as these, she could receive journalists, wearing bedroom
slippers and an old jersey, and make

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 them a cup of good coffe" in a corner of the room, with. out being taken for a little actress trying to get
engago-ments. Whether she chose to play a vamp or an ingénue, she always appeared to be in good spirits
because men nd that charming. Everything was logical and coherent in her career. Everything except her
attitude towards Fran-çois. She no longer needed him. He was of no further use to her. Therefore, the
interest that attached her to him could only be a sentimental one; but strong enough to make her stop on
the path of her ambition and waste her time and thoughts.

A pile of copies of Sandra et le septième art lay on the mantelpiece. On the bedside table I noticed a sort
of family altar with several photographs in large leather frames. On the pillow was a plush leopard which
made me smile.

And suddenly on the dressing-table I recognized three small familiar shapes. In the place of honour
between two massive silver book-ends were François' three novels.

Whenever I discovered a new sign of their friendship it seemed to me that François had passed a whole
lifetime at Sandra's side. And yet it is harmless enough to give inscribed copies of your books. I tried to
picture the scene, I thought of charming inscriptions, I imagined him bringing the books to her in this room.

'Resta vicin' a me, ti voglio bene, tanto bene ...

The record was too sentimental for my mood.

Who was to know whether Sandra had not placed these books well in evidence so that I should see them?

All I had to do was to put out my hand, turn to the y-leaf, and read what he had written. I looked at the
rst book. How happy we had been then! We were just mar-ried. The book was dedicated to me. Poor
François, how

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 bard he had worked! Nothing menaced us except the rent and the gas bills. The second book paid
for the new roof ar Chauvry. The third had come out the year before. A wonderful year. It could
not have been better. I had had the most marvellous, the best husband in Paris. He was thirty two
years old and he was happy. I had believed that it was because of the world created around him by
Eliza-beth, our daily life, and myself. But he was happy with a private happiness of his own:
because he had become a man. Men love work, power, success, but they also need the love of
women. He had mine. He had remained faithful to it, disregarding many others, until the day Sandra
had appeared. Everything about her was new to him. Her race, her profession, her habits. She did
not speak like me, she did not laugh like me, most likely she did not sleep like me. The differences of
nationality even went as far as the choice of scent. And exoticism is always attractive.

Above all when it involves such an exciting person as Sandra, who goes out of her way to love you
although she is made for every man's desire.

I heard her singing above the sound of water. She was probably having a bath. I was alone. I had
only to stretch out my hand, to look for the page....

But I did not do so. I did not wish to discover anything in this kind of way. If François no longer
loved me, it was for him to tell me.

Sandra came back from the bathroom with bare feet, her hair falling over her brown shoulders, more
like Colombine than ever in her white petticoat and brassiere.

Her beauty never ceased to astonish me. I realized that for the rst time I was looking at her with the
eye I have for my models. The face was perfect, delicious, also the

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 shoulders and bust, the arms and hands. She tried to tidy up a little, bundling clothes into a drawer,
getting ear perated with a cupboard door that would not shut, She stamped with rage, and at that
moment I noticed her big feet. I had a sudden longing to draw her. I knew I could make a portrait of her
free of all jealousy. I would try to convey her patrician beauty carried by those clumsy fee.

All the splendor of her race had owered in this young girl, and yet it was borne upon the misery of
those feet formed for running beside the wild sea shore, for tramping in rain, wind, and sun through
seaweed and shingle in desperate expectation of the shermen who never returned.

She saw me looking at the photographs and carne over to the bedside table. She embraced one of them
and showed it to me. Three people were lying in deck chairs in a garden. A little old man with a big
moustache was almost hidden under a large straw hat.

"Mio papa, she told me.

He suffered from rheumatism and her mother had stayed behind to nurse him. Beside him lay a fat, ugly
young man in an open shirt, scratching his chest.

'Ettorino, mio fratello'

She pulled out the plug of the gramophone, cutting off the singer in the middle of a word of love, and
handed me the photo of a garage she had bought for her brother a year before. A magni cent garage.
Ettorino was posing in front of the petrol pumps among his employees. Sandra pouted and told me that
Ettorino, poor boy, couldn't attend to the garage very well because he was always tired.

She returned to the family photograph.

'Mamma mia? she said, pointing to a woman with

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 janense black eyes. Sandra was standing behind her sober's deck chair and leaning over her
shoulder to kiss E una mamma tanto brava, she said. I looked at her ad saw that her eyes were lled
with tears.

"Poverelta," she added, keeping the frame in her hand.

Then she brightened up and handed me a picture of two little girls in a park wearing school uniform.

'Le mie sorelle?

They were adorable. The smaller girl must have been about twelve, the bigger one fteen. They had
the same large eyes as their mother and sister. But I asked Sandra why they were wearing those
thick grey woollen dresses, round felt hats, and little pleated collars. She looked at me in
astonishment, unable to believe that I had never heard of the Poggio Imperiale in Florence, the best
school in Italy. All the girls in society had been educated there, even Princess Marie-José herself,
she told me proudly. I could not help being surprised that such exclusive doors should have opened
to admit these little girls. Sandra must have felt my curiosity. She told me of her efforts to get them
in, named the friends who had interceded for her, and mentioned the fees she paid. It was her most
attering victory over society.

I told her I thought her sisters were very lovely and asked if she was going to let them go into lms.
She put the photograph down and told me in a slow vibrant voice that the children would never
enter her profession. She had placed them in that school so that they should become Ladies, so
that they should be taught everything she had not learnt herself. In her voice was the memory of
years of poverty, the bitterness of the humiliations she had

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 reccived, pity for the sufferings of her family, but also the desire to compensate them for their miseries with her
own

800d fortune.

her black hair.

"Io sono capa di familia, she said proudly as she shook She had been born into a poor family, and through her,
all her relations had become rich.

'Le farò tutte due principesse?

I told her that we lived in a world where princesses tried to become actresses. But Sandra could not appreciate a
paradox. She gave her family a last tender look and pounced on a river of stockings owing out of a drawer.

The immodest grace with which she drew them on was fascinating. Then she vanished into a long black taffeta
dress. She turned round and asked me if she was suitably attired for the private view. I looked at my watch and
told her it was too late to go there. She apologized profusely and declared that I would never forgive her for
making me waste my time.

'I have not been wasting my time,' I said seriously. 'I have got to know you better, and I would very much like to
paint your portrait.?

She sat down beside me and asked how I would like her best. I explained that I had not yet decided, that I
needed to make many drawings of her, that she would have to come and spend a day or two in our house in the
country so that we would be undisturbed. Nothing gave her so much pleasure as to see pictures of herself. She
looked at me with new interest.

I suggested that we should go and fetch François at his of ce and afterwards have dinner at a little restaurant.

She got up at once, looked in the glass, thought herself

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 Two elegant, and slipped off her dress. She put on another, but made a face at it even before she
did up the buttons. in the middle of the room. Suddenly she tapped her fore-one more in a
peticota. suddenly she caped her tone-head and then fetched a black sheath-like jersey dress
out of the cupboard, laid it on the bed, and slowly took off her wide petticoat. The precise little
shapes of the various Sandras I had been looking at, danced about in my head There was
something innocent in her complete lack of modesty. With her toes she tried on various shoes and
sent them bouncing to the other side of the room. It took her a long time to get ready. She sealed
a letter that had to be posted to Italy before evening, changed her bracelets at the last moment,
went out of the room, came back with me, rang for the maid to explain to her how much to tidy up
and what to leave untouched, blew a kiss to her family, and at last dragged me out behind her.

As we went up the stairs leading to François' of ce, we passed Mademoiselle Reine on her way
down. When she saw us together she seemed astonished. Once again I was reminded of what was
happening to me. I did my best to forget it, but there were always people on the watch with their
sympathy or malevolence. They probably did not know more than I, perhaps less. But François'
and Sandra's conduct had not escaped their notice, and according to their feelings, they either
pitied me or laughed at me.

I think Mademoiselle Reine was sorry for me. Above all when she saw that I was friendly with that
wicked woman who had designs on my husband. Mademoiselle Reine had a tender soul and a pure
heart.

It was Sandra who opened the door of François' of ce.

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 I noticed at once that he seemed worried and had to force himself to smile. He asked us if the private view had
been a very elegant affair and seemed surprised to discover that we had not found time to go.

"What have you been doing?' he asked.

We were talking about all sorts of things. We looked at dresses and photographs. Sandra has a lovely room at
the Royal-Monceau.'

He did not reply, then, pointing to the papers which covered his desk, he said brightly:

'Sandra couldn't have come at a better moment. This afternoon I've just received the rst accounts for the sale
of her book. If it continues like this, she'll have some more money coming to her!'

The gures related to the rst ten days in Paris, and the returns were only approximate. But this beginning led
one to hope for a success. François explained to Sandra that if the book went on selling at that rate for six
months, she would get quite a nice sum. He quickly calculated the amount on a corner of his blotting paper, and
translated it for her:

‘Soltanto!’

I burst out laughing. She was really insatiable. But François did not laugh. He told her that many very good
writers would be only too pleased to earn as much as that.

He got up and put on his waterproof. I felt his irritation.

As for Sandra, her lips were pinched and she seemed angry. To ease the situation I said in a calm voice:

'I thought tonight we could go and dine ...?

'Go out again!' said François through his teeth.

But Sandra had understood. She began to talk very loudly saying she had no desire to go out, she would no

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 longer burden him with her presence, she was going back to her hotel by herself. We tried to pacify
her, but we could not manage to get a word in. Suddenly she shouted that she had never pretended
to be a good writer, or even a writer at all, and François knew that better than anyone.

She burst into tears and threw herself against me. I held her in my arms, she trembled as she sobbed
on my shoul-der, wetting me with her tears. Frangois, bundled up in his waterproof, looked utterly
dismayed. Fortunately no one came into the room. Gradually Sandra calmed down.

I took her face in my hands, dried her eyes, and kissed her. She would not look at François who was
standing motionless in the middle of the room. I turned round and called him.

He came over and began to apologize in Italian.

I am sorry to have offended you. Please believe that it was not intended. But I've had such a
worrying day ...' We both looked at him with the same question in our eyes. He told us they were not
personal worries, and that he could not talk about them. I felt anxious, while Sandra was no longer
angry. She smiled at him when he kissed her hand as he asked her forgiveness. We went down to the
car and both of them said they would be delighted to have dinner in the little restaurant I had
suggested.

It was a modest place, kept by a native of Auvergne and his wife. There were only ve tables and a
little bar with a marble-topped counter. There was not much on the tables, thick plates, and sharp-
bladed knives with wooden handles were set out on paper cloths, but Amélie's mushrooms in
parsley and boeuf en daube had all the avour of her home province. From time to time a round-
shoul-dered, pleasant young man with glasses appeared.

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 We are very fortunate," the owner said to me one day in his Cantal accent, "he's a good lad. He has just
entered a teacher's training college and his masters are pleased

with him,'

He said teacher's training college with the same res pect as he would have said The President of the Republic.

At lunch time the restaurant was frequented by local people. Employees, midinettes, and workmen formed a
queue stretching right out to the pavement while they waited for a place at one of the tables. In the evenings
actors and editors from neighbouring theatres and newspaper of ces poured in, mixing with a few elegant
couples. These other Parisians, whether from Paris, Lon-don, or Baghdad, were looked upon with dislike by
the habitués because they foreshadowed the beginning of a fashionable era for the restaurant.

When we arrived there was not a table free. The owner suggested that we should wait at the bar.

'Ciao, bellezza!' said a voice.

Sandra turned and recognized a news photographer she had met in the studio that morning. He was having a
hurried dinner with a journalist. Both were in dinner jackets and were on their way to a Gala. Sandra smiled at
them.

'Signora Tiepola, the Don Juan of letters, and a pretty unknown blonde; take a picture of them,

Victor, and

we'll have it in Saturday's Paris by Night column,' said the journalist with his mouth full. Landlord, you pose
with them behind the bar, then get us two coffees and chalk it all up!'

Victor, without getting up, took out his camera, connected his ashlight, swallowed a gulp of Beaujolais,

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 purned towards us, called Ready l' took the photograph,
repeated it,
and went back to his plums in rum sauce.
"I's my round," said the owner, what would the ladies
like to drink?'
All the diners looked at us, but I felt more at ease here than in the three-star restaurant the other
evening. I knew Sandra would not put on any of her acts because we were not in a smart place. The
two journalists got up, and as they passed by they advised us to make a dash for their table. We
carried our drinks over to it. The owner followed us with the menu. Sandra told him she would leave
the choice of her food to him. It was a solemn moment.
Amélie came out of the kitchen to confer with her hus-band.
For the rst time I saw Sandra appreciating the food she was offered. The absolute integrity of our
hosts showed even in such details as the nut oil with which the salad was prepared. Nothing in that
place struck a false note, and the carafe of wine went perfectly with the goats' milk cheese sent
from the country by the owner's brother.
I was impatient to know what had upset François. I could not believe that his worries had nothing to
do with us. What had caused his outburst of temper against San-dra? She was enjoying her food
and her tears were seemingly forgotten. François was encouraging her and chatting gaily, but I
understood him well enough to know that his good humour was only assumed. What had hap-
pened? This time I was determined to nd out.
My curiosity was so overwhelming that when we dropped Sandra at her hotel I forgot to arrange our
next meeting.
'Well?' I asked François as soon as we were alone.

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 'I will tell you when we get home.' We drove in silence, crossed the Seine, parked in its place by the quay,
entered the house, went up the stairs, opened the door ... all that with my question still unanswered, and
the agonizing worry which was making me physically ill. François pushed home the bolt behind
"Well?' I repeated.
He made a weary gesture which meant 'Wait.' I thought: 'He has made a decision.' And suddenly all desire
to know left me.
I went into our room and sat down on the bed.
"This is the end,' I told myself listlessly.
François sat beside me and took my hand. He was kind, but it was only to be expected. In any case
nothing mattered any more.
'It is such a painful story that I nd it hard to tell you.
But now as I see you are worried, I owe you an explana-tion.'
I nodded.
'Did I ever mention the novel that Marie de Maurieu brought in to me?'
What had Marie to do with all this? I looked at him without replying. He repeated: 'Marie's novel! Darling,
you're dreaming!'
'Yes, yes, I remember, she gave you a manuscript after the holidays.'
But I thought, 'When is he going to speak about us?' Now François had begun talking, he had lost all his
restraint:
I thought the manuscript quite sensational. But as Verneuil is somewhat touchy and one must never
express

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 an opinion before he does so himself, I passed it on to him without comment. This morning he came
into my o ce and told me it was a masterpiece. I immediately ralphoned to Marie and she came to
see me this afternoon at ve o'clock.?
He raised his head and said:
Iknow you don't care for her, but ..?
I was somewhat irritated and cut him short:
You're quite wrong; it is she who does not like me!'
"That is true,' he agreed. 'You were always amiable and she discouraged you.'
He seemed to be re ecting. Then he looked at me and said:
'If, when you and Sandra arrived, I did not seem pleased to see you, it was because I was thinking of
Marie.'
So it had not been a question of us at all, at least not this time. I felt an immense relief, and once
again curious to know more of this story which had nothing to do with me.
François had welcomed Marie with the warmth and enthusiasm which her book merited. He told her
how it had impressed him and predicted a great success for it.
She listened without saying a word, accepting all his com-pliments, showing no reaction whatever.
At last François stopped talking, unable to think of anything to add which might bring this statue to
life and draw a word from her.
Never before had she been so reserved with him.
After he had ceased talking she remained silent for some moments, then she asked him if he really
meant all he had said. Unable to understand her attitude, François answered rather abruptly that it
was not his habit to atter her. Then she emerged from her apathy and said:

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 I asked you because I am going to die.'

Her face became distorted. She was no longer the dis. tinguished lady whom no contingency could take
unawares. Tears rolled down her pale checks, her lips trem-bled, her shoulders were bowed. François was
horri ed.

He did not know what to say to this distraught woman who for the rst time had let herself go in front of
him.

He saw that she was already old and pitiable and he knew that her prediction was true. A few months, a
year, perhaps even two years. She clenched her white hands with their swollen veins. She was afraid,
terribly afraid of the death which awaited her.

Then she pulled herself together, dried her eyes, and talked about the publication of her book in a calm,
precise voice. And once more it was Marie de Maurieu, a great lady, hard and aloof, who left his of ce.

I felt François' hand stroking my forehead. I raised my eyes to look at him. I was sick at heart.

"When you came,' he continued, 'I was still suffering from the effect of the shock. I would have preferred to
go quietly home. But there are things that you cannot explain to Sandra.'

At his last words I was lled with an irrational, shameful happiness. At the bottom of my heart I had to admit
with disgust that François' story had been a relief to me.

Poor Marie! Why had she never allowed me to like her?

Her fate lled me with grief, but a little voice inside me murmured that life had to go on, and that perhaps
her tragic days would soon be over.

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 "Why did you tell me all this?' I asked François. Marie does not like me and would hate me to know. It was to you
alone that she con ded her secret.'

" saw you were worried,' he said, 'and I wanted you to know everything.'

Thank you,' I whispered, laying my head on his shoulder.

But my thankfulness was accompanied by a feeling of in nite tenderness towards the dying woman, who,
without knowing it, had brought us together.

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 Eight
WHEN I woke up the following morning my rst thought was of Sandra. My wish to paint her was as strong as
ever. I told François. At that moment it hardly mattered to me that his feelings towards her were different from
my own perfectly innocent ones. There was so much between us that could never exist for them. It was not to
Sandra that François had con ded his sorrow.

He seemed pleased that I wanted to work, for it was a sign that I was more in control of myself. I waited until
eleven o'clock and then telephoned to the Royal-Monceau.

I was told that Mademoiselle Tiepola had left for Mont-fort-l'Amaury with some press photographers and
would be out all day. I hung up feeling disappointed. I did not know what to do with myself during the long,
boring day ahead of me. It had never occurred to me that Sandra could have anything better to do than to
satisfy my whims. Who were the journalists she had gone with?

Why had she not mentioned them the night before?

At lunch time, François asked me if we were having dinner with Sandra. I said no, and it seemed to me that he
accepted her absence too philosophically. I could think of nothing but her.

I had no desire to begin any other work, the house bored me and I dreaded seeing our friends.

In the evening after dinner, François refused to go to the cinema and sat down at his desk to work. I got out
some new canvases,

sharpened pencils, and cleaned all

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 my brushes. I went to bed thinking that the next morning I would have my model back again.

When I telephoned she was still asleep. She had come in late and had asked not to be disturbed. I hung up
without remembering to leave my name. At midday I rang up again. She had gone out.

I suddenly thought of François' agitation when we had arrived to fetch him the evening before, and of Sandra's
tears. Never had so many tears been shed in the of ce.

But if Marie de Maurieu's had been tragic, Sandra's were those of a spoilt child. Perhaps François had offended
her by humiliating her in front of me, and she was punishing him by depriving him of her presence? This was
exactly what I wanted. However, what I desired more than anything else at that moment was to paint her portrait.

I was hanging on the telephone when François came in for lunch. The line was engaged.

'I'm famished,' he said.

I looked at the time and saw it was one-thirty- ve. I excused myself for being so absent-minded, and ran to the
kitchen to get a plate of hors-d'œuvres. We were both hungry and we ate in silence. Then I went to fetch the
meat and vegetables and put them on the table.

'Everything all right?' I asked Frangois.

"Now it is," he said laughing, "I was starving!'

I put my hand to the telephone and began to dial a number.

'Who are you ringing up with such persistence?' he asked me.

"Sandra. I've been trying all the morning to get her."

'Sandra? I can give you news of her. I saw her this morning:'

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 I put the telephone down beside my plate.
"You didn't tell me ...
'I didn't know you wanted her?
He was eating calmly. I no longer had any wish to paint her portrait. It had worried me to think she might be
angry with him, but at that very moment he had been with her. He had arrived at one thirty- ve, yet it was I
who had excused myself for being late!
"Did she go to the of ce?"
'Just for a moment. She's a bundle of nerves.'
"Why?'
"The Gala for her lm is next Friday and she's besieged from all sides.'
'Where is the Gala going to be?'
'At the Empire. She's simply incredible! She certainly has her head screwed on the right way! Once she has
decided to make a success of anything ...
He was speaking in the enthusiastic, admiring way which had made me so unhappy one evening at Chauvry.
'If you dared her she would even go to the President of the Republic and present him with an invitation. And
the amazing thing is that he would come!' I love my work, but over-ambitious people frighten me.
I had thought François was like me in this way. But on the contrary, he appeared to be dazzled by the
combative, tenacious spirit which emanated from Sandra.
Is she offended with you about the other day?' I asked him. He gave me a surprised look:
"The other day?'
"Yes,' I said in exasperation, 'the other day when you said such unpleasant things to her.'
'Oh, that's all past and forgotten, we never mention it!'

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 Why was I interfering? They did not need me!
She had no time for lunch, so I took her to have a sandwich at the Pam-Pam,' François went on.
'And I heped her to settle a problem which was worrying her?' What problem?'
'She wanted to wear an Italian dress for the Gala, but she's alrady worn all those she brought
here. She was very upset at the idea of wearing a dress made in France, but I told her it would
please the Parisians, and that decided her to go and order one.' Where?'
From Dior!' exclaimed François, as if my question had been idiotic. Then he took a packet of
shiny invitation cards out of his pocket and said:
'She brought me a few invitations. Can you think of anyone who would like to come?' No?
'Very well. Then I'll keep ours, and give the rest to Verneuil to distribute as he thinks best.'
"I wonder what I'll wear that evening?' I said dreamily.
"Don't worry yourself," said François at once, "they'll have eyes for no one but her!' I began to
dget with a piece of bread.
'Did she tell you whether she was coming with us to Chauvry?'
Thad no idea there was any question of it,' he said in surprise. 'In any case it wouldn't have been
possible, she's spending the week-end with Jean Brevan.'
'Who is Jean Brevan?'
The director who is making Robin's lm.'
"So it is all arranged?"
'Yes. The Robins are taking her to Bougival tomorrow

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 after lunch. She's terrifed that Madame Robin will spend those two days sulking,

* he ended with a laugh.

'She would be very silly to do so?'

"Of course. But she's so stupidly jealous?'

"One is always stupidly jealous,' I declared senten-tiously, while deep down I prayed: "Let her go away!

Please let her triumph be so great that it takes her far, very far away...?

But the next day, driving down to the mill, I thought of nothing but the joy of seeing Elizabeth again.

The mill, our dog, our servant, and our child awaited us with their usual delity. Elizabeth hung on to her father's
neck like a little vampire. Aristide cried as he jumped around me. Hortense came out of the kitchen bringing an
aroma of baking and roast. The mill was a comfortable house. The farmhouse table that I had so often waxed,
the white cotton curtains, the vases lled with the last owers of the summer, all combined to produce a benign
and bene cial atmosphere.

We had lunch in the garden with Elizabeth. She was very proud because Hortense was teaching her to count and
she could go up to seven without stumbling. Aristide put his head on my knee and sighed with contentment.

It was very dif cult to get Elizabeth to sleep long after lunch, we had to promise her a walk in the woods.

While she was resting we relaxed in the garden. Hor-tense told me the latest news from Chauvry while she
cleared the table, a late mosquito buzzed around us, and from time to time a leaf fell on to our knees.

At four o'clock we started off for the forest. Elizabeth walked with brave little steps between us. Her hand was

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 comforting. All my memorics of her were delightful, eren her birth. Supposing I had another child? Wouldn't it be
the best way to keep François? I felt mysclf blushing at such a crude thought, but all the same it remained with
me. Between two people who care for each other there should only be bonds, never fetters. There is no way of
insuring the future, not even by means of one's children.

At the top of the slope, Elizabeth heaved a big sigh:

I'm so tired,' she said, raising her head to her father.

He took her on his back. It was a charming sight. Aristide looked at them indulgently as he wagged his tail. I took
deep breaths of the forest air.

We had tea like schoolchildren sitting on the grass in a glade where summer still lingered. Aristide had his share
of the chocolate which smelt of sausage and of sausage which smelt of chocolate. After the last mouthful,
François laid his head on my knee and went to sleep.

'Sh!' said Elizabeth to the dog. 'Don't talk loudly.

Papa is asleep.'

Moving quietly on the moss, she gathered chestnut leaves so as to dress up as a fairy. She brought them to me
with little pink pebbles which she called jewels, tiny inedible mushrooms, and wild berries, brown and dry, which
had dropped from the trees, and that she wanted for doll's food. A freshness rose from the grass, chilling my
legs, but I would have remained in that glade until the end of the world with my child, my dog, and the motionless
sleeper whose weight was so sweet.

The last rays of sunshine vanished between the branches in a small circle of sky. François opened his eyes. At
once Elizabeth found her voice and the dog jumped up.

We went home carrying all the forest treasures in our

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 picnic basket. Hortense had lighted a big re to warm us up. I bathed Elizabeth, and then gave her
supper in front of the re. She gazed with delight at the ames which held the promise of winter joys.

That night we slept the sleep of children.

The next morning I discovered that I could no longer

paint.

The cockerels had woken me up, as they always do on ne summer days. So as not to lose a moment
of daylight, I left the bed where François was still asleep. I felt free of care. All my thoughts were
directed towards a rectangle of white canvas. It was in my mind as I put on a pair of shapeless slacks
and two old jerseys covered with paint marks. Neither the cold nor the spots daunted me. I went
downstairs. The big room was still warm from the re the evening before. In the kitchen Hortense was
giving Elizabeth her breakfast. I kissed my daughter and sat down beside her, resting my elbows on
the shiny American cloth. It seemed to me that we were both small. Hor-tense gave me my tea in a bowl
patterned with red owers which she never allowed out of the kitchen.

"What shall we do today?' asked Elizabeth hopefully.

She was disappointed to hear that I intended to work.

I went out into the garden, which was cold and wet with dew. Soon the September sun would warm, at
least for a few hours, the leaves and owers that had grown stiff in the night. I walked down to the
stream. An icy mist lay over the water, but I was thickly dressed and the sun's rays would sweep it
away. In front of me lay my own horizon. The vista that had enchanted us three years

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 before when we visited the ruins of the mill. The vista, with its constantly changing shape and
colour, that I never grew tired of painting and drawing at every season.

Once again I settled down beside the water. I was con-tent. I aspired to nothing beyond the quiet
happiness that precedes work; choosing a good viewpoint, getting out an old, fat brush and one's
favourite smaller brushes, preparing the palette with autumn colours: brown, green, and white. Work
begins by itself to the rhythm of the brush as it lays on the basic colour. During this time it seems to
me that I am far away. My mind wanders on two little legs along the paths of my imagination. My eyes
are the only link between the world of reality and my hand.

I ought to have chosen a profession which inhibits thought. I would not have remembered Sandra.
The mechanism stopped. My hand hesitated on the canvas I had barely begun to cover, blurred a
line, then came to a standstill.

Before me, peaceful and melancholy, lay the September landscape of Chauvry. I attempted to see
it, to register its soft tints and hazy outlines. But in my heart there was a different autumn, a
different kind of melancholy, and a death that was very different from the end of a season.

I was overwhelmed by a feeling of distress from which there was no refuge. My hand was powerless
to deliver me from my thoughts, I remained motionless, glued to my canvas by the brush clutched
between my nerveless ngers.

I could no longer paint.

I was cold and frightened. At that moment I hated Sandra. She had spoilt everything: the good
greasy smell of paint, the uttering leaves of the young birches, the

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 matchless red of mountain-ash berries, all this was destroyed for me. I had imagined that these simple joys
would act as balm for my lacerated heart. But they had been refused me. There was nothing left to me but des-
pair, stretching ahead like a vast forest.

"How's the work going?' said François' voice.

I started. Without replying I got up and took my canvas from the easel. A single thought gave me the strength to
walk: not to cry until I reached the house.

"What is it, darling?' asked François as he followed anxiously behind me.

I gently pushed him away.

The re was alight in the sitting-room. Without a glance I threw my canvas into the ames. I realized that I was
sobbing, and ran upstairs to ing myself on my bed.

I buried my head in the counterpane which I wet with my tears, and in my mind I went over the scene of that
morning: the cock's crow, the easel beside the water, my greasy palette, my hand which had stopped still ... at
that memory my tears owed faster. I was lost. There had always been a straight road ahead of me and a
companion to walk by my side. Now I had nothing left at all.

'Where's Mummy?' said a little voice beneath my window.

"Mummy's lying down,' answered François.

But Elizabeth's little voice had dried my tears. I bathed my eyes and went down into the garden. A cold wind had
risen and leaves were whirling round the stone table. I shivered. We would not be able to lunch outside that day.

I saw my materials neatly stacked against the wall. François turned his head away, my eyes were full of tears. I
lifted Elizabeth and hugged her in my arms.

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 Im purring!' she said. I'm a kitten and you're its

Mummy!'

This little kitten was my own. Rolled in a ball in my arms, she weighed less heavy
than my heart.

it was only when we found ourselves face to face after lunch that François and I
dared to look at each other. A fow words would have suf ced to shatter the fragile
buble of mystery between us. I do not know what shyness or intuition always kept
us from saying them. That day, however,

I felt he was as upset as I was, and had reached the limit of his endurance. We
looked at each other without speaking, and it seemed to me that our whole life
passed before our eyes: our meeting, our love, our child ... and our understanding.
The understanding which made me pity his unhappiness although I was the victim,
and which enabled him to put up with a wife whom perhaps he no longer loved.

I never knew what lay beneath his silence, and he never knew what was hidden by
mine.

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 Nine
WE returned to Paris and to our fetters.

Since the incident in the garden the situation had become unbearable. I was waiting for something to happen.

Wrapped in my self-imposed silence, I was seething with words, reproaches, and regrets. The moods of optimism and
pessimism which constantly succeeded each other left me very exhausted. François was just as unhappy as I was.
Sandra's presence in Paris was painful enough, but I suffered even more when I did not see her. For then it seemed
to me that she lived in a world which was inaccessible to me, and that François had hidden ways of meeting her there.

On Monday we did not see Sandra. In any case I know that I did not see her. I had nothing to do. I waited. I avoided
my studio. I tried to make my mind a blank, so as not to remember that I couldn't paint any more. But all the same the
thought was in my blood, and every heartbeat reminded me of my failure, which seemed to me to be nal,
irrevocable, and permanent.

Sandra telephoned on the Tuesday at about one o'clock

to invite us to dinner.

For the rst time I saw her playing the part of hostess.

She had asked us to come to the Royal-Monceau at nine o'clock. But this time she did not keep us waiting. The
reception clerk showed us as far as the lift. I went with François to Sandra's room along the way I had taken alone on
my rst visit. A waiter opened the door and then

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 epped aside. I looked round for the disorder that had greed me before. The suitcases had vanished, a sheaf
of gladioli was arranged on the table in the vestibule. The dor of the small sitting-room opened and Sandra
came

to meet us.

"Questa sera siete gli ospiti di Sandra Tiepola,' she said, holding out her hands.

She did not smile. There was something formal about her which intimidated me. She led us into the sitting-
room where a table was spread with a white cloth. That she received us in her suite proved she did not wish to
treat us as strangers. She was wearing a long ivory satin gown which harmonized with the light wood and the
green cushions in the sitting-room. The waiter took our coats and came back to prepare the cocktails. But
where were the suitcases? The indirect lighting, two or three vases of owers, the ne silver on the white linen,
the discreet presence of the waiter, all combined to disconcert me.

Sitting on the sofa, I swirled the ice about in my glass.

Sandra took a sip and began to smile:

"This is a surprise party,' she said in French.

"Una sorpresa tanto gentilel' answered François.

He looked round him as though he were there for the rst time. But everything was so changed since the
maids had tidied up that his glances proved nothing at all.

During dinner we were rather stiff. After the dessert Sandra got up and went into her room. The door was
Left open and then I knew where the suitcases were. The waiter placed some delicate gold-coloured
porcelain cups in front of us. Sandra came back carrying an electric coffee machine.

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 "This is real coffee!' she exclaimed, putting it down on the table.
The waiter lowered his eyes.
'Il maraviglioso caffè italiano, she added, bending over to inhale the aroma.
She was herself again. The waiter permitted himself a shadow of a smile and disappeared.
The coffee was unforgettable. We were certain to sleep very badly after it. Sandra drank two cups.
She put her hands on the coffee pot and seemed to go into a daydream.
"The Gala,' she said.
Suddenly she raised her head:
'Quest'anno sarà quello di Sandra Tiepola."
She had no fear of what Paris would say about her lm.
She was sure of herself and her luck. François looked at her as though she were a miracle.
Everything was planned down to the last detail. Her dress was magni cent, her jewels marvellous,
her furs had to be seen to be be-lieved. She had appointments with photographers on the
Wednesday and Thursday, she would sleep all day on Fri-day. At ve o'clock the masseuse would
arrive, at six the hairdresser and the manicurist. She would emerge from her bed and their hands
more beautiful than ever, ready to lay her gloved hand on the red velvet rim of her box.
I could not help being amazed at her courage and self-con dence. Her smile faded:
'Questo solo è la parte mia?'
Naturally we all had our parts to play. I wondered what mine would be.
Depression and the coffee kept me awake part of the night. I thought of the state of our nances.
We had been

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 living at Sandra's beck and call, and now?
.. I would
wear my white dress for the Gala but what would I put over my shoulders?
The shadows in the room grew dim and I dropped off to sleep.
In my dreams I saw Elizabeth. She was sitting on a fallen tree-trunk wearing her blue dress and eating her tea.
But it was winter and her little bare feet were touching the snow. I told her she would be cold, but she held out
her bread with a sweet smile and said:
'For you, Mummy?
I saw that the bread was a wad of banknotes. I wanted to hug her, but she had disappeared. In her place
Patrice was pinning a dress on a wicker mannequin.
"You'll be the most beautiful of all, my angel!' he said.
I cried and ran into the elds, calling Elizabeth. I woke up sobbing in François' arms.
'You were crying,' he said,
'but I couldn't make out
what you were saying.?'
I clung to him and said that I thought I had lost Elizabeth in the snow. I was still trembling and I longed to talk
to him and to roll up into a ball in his warmth. But he was sleepy, and when he saw I had grown calmer, he
turned away from me and went peacefully to sleep.
My eyes remained open. I could only have gone back to sleep if I had been able to hear Elizabeth's regular
breathing, to caress her hand as it lay on the sheet, to kiss the tousled curls on her forehead. But she was
sleeping in Hortense's care twenty kilometres away.
All the morning I fought with myself. Elizabeth's portrait was constantly before my eyes. But since my
nightmare, the battle was lost. At four o'clock I took my

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 bag, put on my gloves, and went to the rue des Saints-Pères.

I was greeted affectionately by Madame Bernadette.

She is an amiable widow of good family who had been in charge of the gallery for years. Patrice chose her
because he admires respectability.

"You've never stayed away from us for so long!' she said with a gentle reproach in her voice. Then she whispered
in my ear:

'But if you bring us a ne exhibition, we'll forgive your silence all these months.'

I smiled awkwardly. While Madame Bernadette was telling Patrice on the house telephone that I was waiting to
see him, I tried not to look at the pictures all round me.

'Monsieur Levan wonders if you would mind going upstairs, he is not very well and is obliged to stay in his room.'

Patrice lived on the mezzanine oor above the gallery.

I found him at the top of the little wooden staircase wearing a cashmere dressing-gown, with a silk scarf round
his neck. He was full of excuses because he had to receive me so informally. He took me into his of ce where the
Louis XIII chairs almost touched the low ceiling. The choice of hangings, the breadth of the divan, the rugs, and
the lighting gave the effect of comfort and good taste so cherished by old English bachelors.

So that I should excuse his dressing-gown, Patrice proposed tea.

At that moment it seemed the most desirable thing on earth. Patrice pulled a silken cord and a door opened
behind him.

"Tea," he said,

"with little cakes."

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 Why didn't I come here more often? Why had I neglected my friends? Patrice put a low table beside me and
opened a box of cigarettes.

My cold keeps me pinned up here like a cockchafer in a box. I'm a poor crotchety old man!' he sighed.

As I lighted a perfumed cigarette I was moved to pity by the thought that Patrice would soon be an old
gentle-man. I looked at him, he was charming with his white temples and his lordly airs.

*I've never seen such a beautiful old cockchafer as you,' I answered.

"You're attering the insect!' he laughed. But I knew he was delighted.

When tea arrived he got up with all the grace of a young man. Amélie, his mother's old servant, came in
carrying an enormous silver tray. Her wrinkled face lit up with a smile. I asked after her health.

T'm all right,' she said, 'it's poor Monsieur Patrice who has caught the cold?'

'Come on, you old guardian angel,' joked Patrice, 'stop worrying and put that tray down here so that we
can see if you've forgotten anything?'

Amélie left the room and Patrice bent over the teapot.

He lifted the lid, gravely sniffed the tea, and nodded with satisfaction. The tray was a wonderful sight. The
transparent porcelain cups, the antique silver pots, the toast in its white napkin, the bunch of anemones,
and the plates of dainty little cakes were like the ful lment of a greedy, but discriminating little girl's dream.

'I know you only take one lump of sugar," said Patrice, handing me a cup.

It was true. Patrice never made a mistake.

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 "How is your mother?' I asked him.
His face lit up.
*Biquet took her out in the car to lunch at Saint-Ger-main. I wanted her to make the most of this lovely day.
Winter will be here all too soon.'
Patrice, you are delightful! I would like to have been your mother!'
"Well, you've missed it!' he said laughing. "You could easily be my daughter!'
I could not help thinking that he was boasting a little.
It is Patrice's weakness to try to make people believe he is a man. Perhaps he believes it himself.
'Would you care for some salt on your toast?'
"Just a little, please.'
He leant towards me and asked with a serious face:
Have they passed the hat round to you yet?'
"No,' I answered in surprise. 'What for?'
Don't you know about it? How funny! Well, they're getting up a fund to provide Colombe Verneuil with a new
nose.'
I burst out laughing.
You must admit that the joke is in rather bad taste!' he said complacently.
I should say it's her nose that's in bad taste!'
'Impossible!' he said as he attacked a strawberry tart,
*but she was born too early to dare to change it. She would look charming with the little panther's nose that is
so fashionable this year. She would become virtuous. It wouldn't be a nose, but a way of life that she would buy
herself.'
I wondered uneasily if Patrice amused himself readily at my expense when I was not there. But pushing

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 amay his empty cup, he said in quite a different tone:

"When are you going to show me what you are doing

DON?

The time for jesting was past.

Not just yet. I'd rather wait a little while. I have a whole lot of canvases ...' I stopped. The look in Patrice's
eyes made me uncomfortable. He was not taken in by my excuses. He knew I was not working. There was
a long silence.

If one day,' Patrice spoke deliberately without taking his eyes from mine, "if at any time you found you
were going through a bad period, I mean of course profession-ally," he added quickly, 'and even if you
thought you had reached an impasse, don't get frightened. Give yourself time! You are so young!
Between your age and mine there is a whole lifetime, and room for so many setbacks ...

If only I could have told him of my unhappiness! But it would have meant explaining everything from the
begin-ning, and mentioning things that had nothing to do with

You are all gentleness and sweetness, but you have very pointed teeth. Yes, yes, don't look at me with
those astonished eyes! You have beautiful little pointed teeth which close over anything you love and
never let go.' What was the use of con ding in him? There was no need for it. He would have been able to
tell my story better than I could.

"I like that. It pleases me very much. Do you know I often think of you, you unfaithful creature! You
haven't set foot in the Gallery for exactly sixty-two days! Yes, I remember very well, it was the thirteenth
of July.

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 I have even asked myself why I am so attached to you. I'm not affectionate you know. I don't care for people. And
then, one day I knew why I loved you ... because I take an interest in you.'
Was it his heart or his mind which had prompted Patrice to say these words? It did not matter. I was happy to have
heard them. But it was not his way to show emotion.
He brought us back to frivolity by saying affectedly:
'Have a chocolate, darling?'
'No, thank you, Patrice. Thanks for the tea, and for everything?
I smiled at him and added as lightly as I could:
'Once again, I am sorry not to be your mother. Now I must go.'
I went towards the door.
"Darling,' said Patrice, 'we've hardly begun to talk.
I want to tell you that my feelings towards Elizabeth haven't changed.'
He leant against the back of a high chair and smiled the beautiful smile of a helpful decadent old archangel.
The blood was beating in my ears. Ever since my arrival he had known I had come to sell Elizabeth. He knew I was
in dif culties and that he was my last resource.
"Well?' he said close to me.
He took my hand, so listless and so sad, between his.
'All right,' I murmured.
And I ed.
I went out the whole of the following morning. I knew Patrice would act quickly, and I did not wish to be there when
he sent for the picture.
I returned to Quai des Grands-Augustins about lunch time. I had not been mistaken, Elizabeth had disappeared.

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 They came to fetch Mademoiselle the porter told me, and they left this for you Madame.'

*This was a bouquet of red roses with a card from Pat-nice Writen on it were just two words: "Thank you?" But there
was also another envelope, larger, and headed with the name of the Gallery. I opened it and found a cheque inside.

Patrice had not made it out for the sum he had offered me on the night of the dinner party. He had greatly
exceeded his promise.

I had enough money in hand to put our household on its feet again.

But that was not my reason for selling Elizabeth, neither had Patrice bought it in order to do a kind action.

He knew how much I needed the money because he had not crossed the cheque.

In the early afternoon I called at his bank. I had never before had so much money in my bag.

Presently I found myself in a shop where the vast mirrors re ected the grey carpet and the red velvet chairs.

A digni ed saleswoman asked me unsmilingly what I required. She installed me in front of a walnut counter topped
with grey plush and came back with a young girl carrying an armful of furs. I asked the prices with an air of
indifference. They staggered me.

"Take them all away, Mauricette," said the saleswoman coldly. She asked me to wait a few moments and gave me a
fashion magazine to look at. I glanced through it idly.

Spread across a page, a little brown mink looked at me with its bright eyes.

"There would be no elegant women

without us!' read the caption.

"This is a really exceptional model,' said the sales woman when she came back.

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 'It is not actually fashioned like a stole, but it is so long and supple that it can serve the same purpose. And
the price is very low!' For the rst time she permitted herself a faint smile:
'See for yourself, Madame.'
She pushed the ticket under my nose as if she did not expect me to believe her.
'It is most reasonable, isn't it, Madame?'
I nodded. It was almost the amount of Patrice's cheque.
I draped it round my shoulders. It was very lovely. The mink clung softly to my suit without adding any
weight or breadth.
'I will take it,' I said slowly.
You couldn't do better!' said the saleswoman trium-phantly. 'Believe me, Madame, you're getting a
wonderful bargain. Will you keep it on?'
'No, I prefer not to?
I looked at myself once more in the glass.
"Is it wild mink?' Not at that price,
Madame! Why, it would cost at
least twice as much!' exclaimed the saleswoman in a scandalized voice. "No, it is a very ne ranch mink.' It was
of little importance. In any case I would not have known the difference. I handed her the stole.
"One second, if you please,' she said, putting it round me again. 'I would like our manageress to see you.'
She went to the back of the shop and called:
'Madame Gervaise !'
A mirror slowly turned, taking with it the re ection of the carpets and chairs, and an enormous old woman,
dressed in black, came out of the wall. The saleswoman rushed up to her:

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 Madame Gervaise, I called you so that you could see Madame who is taking number 663! Doesn't it suit
her drinely?'
The old woman looked at me with her sharp Little eyes:
You are very elegant, Madame. That is rare for anyone so young?'
Madame Gervaise likes customers who can show her furs to advantage,' said the saleswoman in a
con dential
tone.
A girl in a cotton blouse came up.
'Adrienne, I rang for you to make a parcel for Ma-dame,' said the saleswoman, handing her the stole.
Then she turned to me and murmured with a pained expression:
'Would you prefer to settle in cash or by cheque?'
'In cash,' I said, opening my bag.
"Then it's over there,' she said, showing me the way to the cash desk.
The old woman called her and spoke a few words into her ear. Then she bowed to me and said:
I wish you every success, Madame,' and with her slow, majestic step she walked towards the mirror. Once
again the glass wall opened, carrying with it the scene in the shop, and the heavy form disappeared.
The cashier wrote out the bill. The saleswoman told me with a smile:
'Madame Gervaise has made a slight reduction, look ...'
'But how is that!' I exclaimed in surprise.
'She always gives a rebate to customers who know how to wear her models.'

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 My parcel arrived. The saleswoman accompanied me to the door, relieved not to have missed her
sale. On the doorstep she handed me the box and said:

"I am sure it will give you much pleasure, Madame.

There's truth in the saying that there is nothing to equal mink. It is a woman's Legion of Honour.'

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 Ten
PARTs is a strange place. You live there for a whole life-time, know everyone, are yourself known, and yet it is
enough to make a small change in your habits to imagine yourself transported to another town.

The people who were assembled in the Empire Theatre on the night of the Gala belonged to one of the
thousand different circles in the capital. It was not ours. François and I were not used to entering a cinema
on a red carpet between a double hedge of green plants and Republican Guards. The couples near us
greeted each other with the easy familiarity and good manners of those who meet every evening at the
centre of things. Nothing surprises them. They are at home. They do not appear pleased to be there, but
they could not bear to be absent.

When the usherette showed us to our seats in the stalls, I thought I was in the midst of a herd of wild animals.

We were surrounded by mink: tawny mink, black mink, silver or blue mink, pink and golden mink. Every wo
man, old or young, pretty or plain, was wearing the uni-form. I began to hate the creature for whose fur I had
sold Elizabeth's picture. I know now that if one day I paint a portrait of Envy, it will be a woman covered with
mink, and she will have the claws and pointed teeth of that little rodent.

We tried to put names to the faces round us. The lm stars were easy to recognize, but how can you guess
which are the critics, the politicians, or the producers behind the

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 invariable white shirt-fronts? The Verneuils were holding court in a box. Full-face, Colombe was marvellous,
but when she showed her pro le, she had the monstrous aspect of one of those blood-thirsty
mythological birds, a harbinger of disaster. Three rows in front of us an academician was whispering into
the ear of a glamorous singer over another woman's bare shoulders. A whiff of scent made me turn my
head. A tall thin woman was coming along our row. Without excusing herself, she looked people straight in
the eye to force them to get up, sweeping their faces with the bow on her dress as she passed by.

'What awful seats, Titi!'

The bow was just in front of my nose. I had to stand up.

'Is it my fault, dear? If you want to make a scene we'd better leave here and go to our local cinema instead,'
answered the nasal voice of an immensely tall, fair man with a languid and distinguished manner. He had
stopped in front of François who got up in his turn, and we all four stood facing each other.

"Please take your seats,' begged the usherette.

"How idiotic!' said the woman as she took her place beside me.

I waited to sit down again until the tall man had passed.

"Here's the menu,' he said, giving her the programme.

"I'm not hungry,' she answered, pushing it away with her hand.

'Has your place at table taken your appetite away?'

*Every time we accept an invitation to a friend's play or lm, it's the same thing. Either he puts us at the
back of the hall, or up in the gods. But anyhow I don't care a damn about this evening's lm!'

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 Her companion gave a forced laugh:

"You are really too funny for words!' he exclaimed as if he were enjoying himself.

The tall thin woman yawned and said no more.

I continued to look about me. Sandra was radiant in the front of her box. She had arranged to be
alone there, occupying the whole space so that Madame Robin had to remain in her shadow. Behind
them we could just see Robin and two unknown people. Sandra had been right to predict that
everything would be perfect. Her hair curled over her ivory shoulders and sparkled with every move-
ment. A fragment of white fur rose like a wing behind her bare back. Her skin appeared darker and
warmer between its whiteness and that of the long gloves circled with bracelets. Even though
everyone in the theatre was looking at Sandra, her beauty alone would not have won them over. There
was no indulgence in the observing eyes of the smart audience, and more than a hint of irony.

"There's Robin's protégée,' said our neighbour, indicating her with his pointed chin.

"What do I care about Robin's protégée,' answered his companion.

"She's a pretty little thing, but can she act?' asked a fat gentleman with pendulous cheeks.

The heads turning towards Sandra's box had something barbarous and indecent about them.

Soon the lights were dimmed on all the curiosity, the anxieties, and the indifference. During the news-
reel and the rst lm, the atmosphere was so frigid that it made me fear for Sandra's success. From
time to time a little ironical laugh could be heard, reminding us that this was no ordinary public. These
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 society and partly to the arts, are afraid of seeming too casily satis ed, or of applauding the work of friends
and colleagues.

When the big lm swept on to the screen everyone sat up.

A wave broke along a deserted beach.

povero borgo di pescatori

*Cera una voila, it ria, una poverd ragazza, in um

At the far end of the beach, a long way from the village, stood a mud hut. The doorway was covered with a sack,
a hand appeared, pushed it aside, and a girl came out.

It was Sandra. Her hair ying, her dress torn, her feet bare, and her legs scratched by the rocks. She was very
different from the doll in a white dress posing on the balcony of the theatre. But almost as soon as I saw her, I
knew she had won. She had won because she showed herself to the people of Paris as she really was. If she had
played the vamp or princess, the audience that evening would have said she looked like a peasant and lacked
dis-tinction. But when they saw her dressed in rags, playing the part of a very poor girl, they would say, as she
shone down on the assembled company, that she bore herself like a queen. The spectators did not capitulate
straight away.

The coolness persisted for another ten minutes. Then, at a certain expression of Sandra's, a woman burst into
laugh-ter. A moment later the fat man said to his neighbour:

"Charming, isn't she?'

There was a close-up of Sandra in which she looked particularly beautiful, and the ice was broken. After that
they laughed and enjoyed themselves, and at the end, when she drew the curtain over her door for the last time,
I think many people were moved to tears.

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 As the lights went up there was a storm of enthusiasm.
Sandra had become the favourite of the day. Fashionable Paris can make or mar an idol in a night. Afterwards
the whole town follows suit, but with such a temperamental public an attachment is more likely to be
temporary than
permanent.
Everyone turned towards the balcony, frenziedly applauding and shouting 'bravo. Our neighbour literally
yelled himself hoarse. The tall thin woman tried to drag him away:
'Let's be the rst to congratulate darling Robin,' she said.
François and I were standing up and applauding like the rest. It must have been exhilarating and moving for
the peasant girl of a moment ago to have carried the fort in a single assault. A small white gure could be seen
standing in the balcony. Sandra waved her satin glove to the audi-ence. The applause redoubled. François
whispered to me:
Let's try to slip out and see her before the rush.' We crept away in the midst of the bravoes which still
continued. We ran up the staircase leading to the boxes.
In front of hers, a Republican Guard stopped us.
'But we're friends of Mademoiselle Tiepola's!'
pro-
tested François.
'Ah! She has lots of friends this evening," sneered the guard, who smelt of drink.
At that moment the doors of the other boxes opened, and the audience came out.
There were photographers
climbing the stairs, photographers coming down from the upper storey, and photographers dashing along the
corri-dors. Everyone seemed to have gone mad. A fat man kept repeating:

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 I have the exclusive rights! I have the exclusive rights!' Robin passed close by without seeing us. He was jubi-lant. His
wife seemed pleased to see me:
"What torture!' she exclaimed, 'how I hate all this!'
'Ah! Good evening,'
' said her husband absent-mindedly,
shaking hands with us.
Then he saw a group of reporters besieging Sandra as she came out of her box:
Do please take pity on Mademoiselle Tiepola! She's exhausted!' he shouted, wringing his hands. Then he added so
that everyone should hear:
"The emergency exit! We must use the emergency exit.' Sandra was inaccessible. The elegant crowd, more ruthless
than people in the Métro, passed round her in a battle-royal where the ashlights seemed to be the weapons.
'Bernard, darling, your new discovery is simply gor-gushed the tall, thin woman behind us, 'we've
had an unforgettable evening!'
'Don't go away,
, answered Robin, 'we're having supper
together.'
At that moment there was a break, as sometimes happens in a storm. Sandra appeared in the midst of the crowd,
radiant and beautiful in her wonderful white dress. She caught sight of us and was obviously pleased.
She waved and called out. A photographer rushed up, there was a ash, and then the crowd closed round her again.
"Let's go,' said François.
At the bottom of the stairs we met Marie de Maurieu.
She was with her youngest brother, a harmless elderly man of good social standing who had neither her genius nor
her aggressiveness.

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 What a beautiful lm!' he said.
How can you say that, Hugues, it's just a squalid melodrama! Everyone thinks it is marvellous
because the young actress is attractive, but you mustn't muddle up the two things.'
There was no smile, no leniency, no kindness.
Tam leaving Paris,' she said without looking at us.
For the rst time since I had known her, I admired Marie. Disaster and the approach of death had
not changed her at all. Towards me she showed the same proud disdain, and to François the same
aloof friendliness as always. She would die as she had lived.
"I am leaving Paris,' she told us simply, as we stood there at the bottom of a ight of red velvet stairs.
She meant she was leaving life, we should not see her again.
It was her farewell.
Shall I see you at the of ce?' asked François in a voice which trembled slightly.
'No, I shall not have time to go there before my depar-ture,' she said abruptly. Then she gave him
her hand without another word.
Good night, Madame,' she said to me as she vanished into the darkness, her tall silhouette wrapped
in her coat, towering above her brother by the head she held so high.
It was a ne exit.
But we soon forgot her. In the car driving home we hardly spoke. We were thinking of Sandra.
'Quest'anno sarà quello di Sandra Tiepola..
She would no longer live an ordinary life like the rest of us. Between her and the world would stand
the group of people who were interested in her success.

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 'Sandra, sleep, you have to be on the set early tomor-row,' her doctor would say.

'Sandra go out, we want you to be seen,' her producer would tell her.

'Sandra don't eat so much,' her masseuse would say.

'Sandra smile, Sandra cry, Sandra take the plane, Sandra ride, Sandra talk English, Sandra dance,
Sandra smile, Sandra you must become famous, Sandra earn a lot of money, more, more, more.'

There would never again be room for the attractive translator, except in her memories. I had wished
to leave the issue to fate, and fate had decided. François remained to me. A little sad, his shoulders
slightly bent, but all my own.

At the time Sandra was toasting her success in champagne with new friends who would be useful in
her career, I went into the kitchen. I fetched two slices of ham, a lettuce, and a half- nished bottle
of wine from the refrigerator and carried them to a small table in the sitting-room.

François remained to me. With his silence and his regrets. Had I nally lost? Had we not all three
lost? Yes, that was it. I looked at François with such intensity that he raised his head and smiled like
someone who has been caught misbehaving.

"That's a nice little fur you've got,' he said, pointing to my stole. 'I don't think I've ever seen it
before?' My luxury, my folly, was lying in a heap on a chair like a dejected animal. But no dead mink
sewn to another dead mink would ever warm me from the cold I felt when I saw that blank space on
the wall where once Elizabeth had been, eating her bread and butter.

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 Eleven
WE were sitting in our big room at Chauvry the following evening waiting for dinner. It had been a cold day, and fog
hung over the garden. I was thinking that very soon we would have to shut the house and return to Paris with
Hortense, Elizabeth, and Aristide.

It had rained in the afternoon when we walked in the forest with François. We loved the grey sky and the odour of
decay that rose from the earth and the wet leaves, but nevertheless they were the rst signs of approaching winter.

We were close to the re, trying to escape the draughts which came in under the doors. I had just put Elizabeth to
bed and was looking at a book, when Aristide rose up on his front paws, went over to the french window, and began
to growl. François raised his head:

'Anyone there?" he asked.

I drew back the white curtain to look into the garden.

The fog was so thick that I could not make out any of the familiar shapes. But Aristide was still growling. Suddenly I
saw a gure advancing towards me. It was only when she came into the zone of light that I recognized Sandra.

I called her name in amazement. François came up to me and we opened the door. Sandra entered and as I kissed
her I felt the winter cold on her cheeks. She gave us a long explanation about how she had wanted to spend a quiet
Sunday with us. Her arrival in the darkness and fog had been so unexpected that for the moment we were quite

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 disconcerted. For the rst time we addressed each other as

't. I understood that since the day before she had been given the use of a car, and that she had come to
Chauvry as soon as she had been able to get away from Paris. There was a general upheaval. I ran to tell
Hortense, and set about preparing the spare room. Meanwhile Sandra and François went to tell the
chauffeur that he could go back to Paris.

I rushed

upstairs to make the bed while Hortense looked through her store cupboard. As I fetched blankets out
of the chest in the corridor I passed the window. The lights from the ground oor were dimmed by the
fog.

Through the darkness I saw François and Sandra returning to the house. But the mist was too thick for
me to distinguish more than a single shadow. I left the window repressing a desire to go down and join
them. I slowly made the bed trying not to think of them sitting comfortably together in the big room.
When I went down, Sandra had taken my place by the re. François was near her on a low chair. Aristide
had stopped growling. He had understood that the newcomer was a friend and he must be amiable. I laid
an extra place at table. Sandra suggested helping me and got up. I refused her offer and François made
her sit down, placing his hand on her wrist.

'Can we have something to drink?" he asked me.

He could not move from his place. He was riveted to Sandra's feet after he had thought he would never
see her again. I got out the glasses, put them on a tray, and went to fetch the bottles from the kitchen.
Everything was thrown into uncertainty once more by Sandra's visit. If she had come back, breaking the
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 success and the restrictions it had imposed upon her, it was because she still needed him. And yet I felt
neither sad nor anxious. When I returned Sandra and François were no longer talking. They seemed to be
dreaming in front of the re. He remained dreamy all the evening, but she livened up once we began dinner.
That night I think we must have burned a whole forest. We threw one log after another on to the glowing
embers and basked in the warmth.

During dinner Sandra talked almost without stopping.

For the past week she had been under too much strain.

She had been obliged to make a great effort for the sake of her career, and now she needed to let herself go.

'Mi sembra di ritrovarmi a casa," she said as she stroked

Aristide's docile head.

To whom do you speak about your life, if not to those you love? I realized why I was neither sad nor worried
that evening. I felt there was real friendship between us.

It shone as brightly as the ame which rose from the logs in the replace.

Hortense had cleared the table a long while before, and the room smelled pleasantly of smoke when at last we
looked at the time. It was half past two. François said it was idiotic to stay up so late and he was going to bed.
I was left alone with Sandra. She asked if she could lock up the house with me. We tiptoed about so as not to
wake Elizabeth and Hortense. I took pity on Aristide and let him sleep in the corner beside the dying re. We
went into the kitchen and drank big glasses of cold water. I put out the lights downstairs and we carried
Sandra's Little suitcase up to the rst oor. As we reached the landing, François came out of the bathroom in
his dressing-

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 gown. It was so late that everything seemed unreal. He kissed us both lightly on the forehead as
though we had been two little cousins of his, and said good night obviously expecting us to stay
together for a while longer. I understood him very well, for I too felt that I could not just leave
Sandra and join him in our bedroom as usual, I took her to her room and showed her the bathroom.

She wanted to come with me to look at Elizabeth and we both leaned over her little bed in the
darkness. Then I helped her to unpack. I saw to it that she had all she needed, and we remained
together for a very long time talking. We spoke in whispers like two schoolchildren who had been
told to go to sleep. We had got quite used to calling each other 'tu'. I sat down on her bed in my coat
and skirt and plaited her hair, which I tied with some of Elizabeth's ribbon. While she was undressing
I went to wash. She joined me in the bathroom looking like a young girl at boarding school with her
two plaits falling over her simple pink and white lawn nightgown. We kissed each other and I went to
my room. A sound of regular breathing came from the bed where François was peacefully asleep.

Bursts of laughter and the sound of voices woke me up.

The shutters were still closed, but I guessed that behind them the sun was shining. I got up and
pushed them open.

Sandra, François, and Elizabeth were playing ball in the garden. At rst they did not see me. They
looked like a happy family. Sandra was still in her dressing-gown, but François and Elizabeth were
dressed.

'Ciao!' I shouted.

They raised their heads, and Sandra and Elizabeth

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 started to talk at the same time. They roared with laughter as Sandra lifted Elizabeth up in her arms.

I had breakfast with Papa and the lady! She buttered my bread!' said Elizabeth.

'Siamo già tanto amiche!'

I left the window and went to tidy myself a little before going down. I found my place laid. Sandra served me
with as much care and attention as if I had been a guest in her house. Elizabeth pressed close to me and
whispered that the lady was beautiful.

François was very sorry that he could not spend the afternoon with us, but the day before he had
promised to meet Vergaux to discuss an important question concerning a book they were publishing. I
suggested to Sandra that we should go for a walk in the forest, but when I saw her face, I realized that
walking had few charms for her.

We slowly got dressed. I had told Hortense to prepare the lunch and then go out. I had planned to give
Elizabeth her meal alone and then put her to bed, so that we would be left in peace, but she looked so
unhappy at the prospect, that I felt sorry for her and allowed her to stay with us.

Lunch was delightful. We opened the big doors of our sitting-room and pushed the table into a patch of
sunshine.

We ate the last raw vegetables of the year: pale tomatoes, olives, celery with its tender leaves. François'
sadness seemed to have vanished. Sometimes a change in the weather is enough to make life appear gayer.

Sandra put Elizabeth to bed while I cleared the table.

It took them a long time and they had lots of fun. I could hear them laughing from the kitchen. François was

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 reading a magazine in the sitting-room. When I went up to Elizabeth's room she told me:

"The pretty lady doesn't understand anything I say. She doesn't know what bedroom slippers are!
And yet she's grown up!' I tried to explain to her that in different countries they speak different
languages. Then she came close to me and whispered:

'I think she must be a fairy!'

We went down into the sun again, and soon François had to leave for Montmorency. We remained
alone, rather stupe ed by the heat, lying in the shelter of the house on our deck-chairs.

Sandra hummed dreamily to herself. I let myself drift into sleep while looking at her. She had one
of those voices that are a pleasure to listen to. With my eyes half closed I watched her. Lying
there on her deck-chair she was amazingly natural. Men and the public were far away, she was not
observing herself. In the sunshine of a deserted garden she was regaining strength for new
battles. Her hair blew gently round her face, which was not made-up, and she was all the more
attractive because she was making no effort to please. She continued to sing softly. And I only
know that suddenly I found myself sitting on a hard chair with my drawing block, and a pencil in
my hand. I did not think about what I was doing. A kind of instinct preserved me, warning me not
to ask any questions. I felt that I must draw quite mechanically, otherwise I should drop back into
my terrors and my sterility. All at once Sandra stopped sing-ing, and I knew she had realized I was
drawing her, and was trying to see my work. I signed to her not to pay any attention, and she went
back to her state of euphoria.

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 I was only concerned with her face. It was this which interested me with all it contained of nobility, ambition,
determination, vivacity, and sensuality; the whole overlaid with very great beauty. And it was a familiar face.
Not because it was Sandra's, but because I had already come across it at the base of a fresco, in the
corner of a picture: the face of a peasant girl of the Quattrocento who had come to sit in a painter's studio
before returning to her misery. The anonymous face of generations of women long since gone. On one
side dust and oblivion, but on the other an angel on canvas, spanning the centuries with a ower in her
hand.
I went on drawing for so long that I did not realize the sun had gone. But when Sandra found herself in the
shade, she soon let me know that she did not want to pose any longer.
She came to look over my shoulder and was surprised to nd I had only made one drawing in all that long
time.
I expected a whole lot of exclamations, but she looked intently at her portrait:
"Lovely," she said at last, "very lovely?"
Then she added:
'Vuoi bene a l'Italia, tù, vero?'
At that moment a little voice called from upstairs:
"Mummy! Mummy!'
I went to get Elizabeth up and brought her downstairs with me. We carried in the deck-chairs, closed the
doors, and lit the re. Then we all three made a solemn ceremony of tea in the kitchen. We laid the table for
dinner.
The big sitting-room was already warmed by the re.
Then François arrived back.
If I close my eyes I can see the scene now...

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 Elizabeth and the dog were playing in a corner. Sandra was lying down near the re. It was she who put out
her hand and told François to look at what I had done. How beautiful she was then in the soft light of the
lamp, with the ames dancing behind her in the replace. More beautiful than anyone could ever describe
or paint her. And with her careless gesture she was loading destiny against herself.

'Guardi, guardi,' she said, pointing to the sheet of paper I had left lying on a table.

François absent-mindedly obeyed her invitation and I felt my heart contract. Standing there I awaited his
verdict in a silence that seemed to me eternal. He held the drawing in his hands. Surely he had never before
looked so ardently at Sandra's face.

'How he loves her!' I thought.

The silence became more and more painful every mo-ment. I would have liked the ames to reach out and
destroy the drawing. Then François' voice reached me:

'I have found you again!'

François!'

My cry of distress and hope was scarcely more than a whisper. But on his face, still bent over the network
of lines which pictured the source of our suffering, I read my triumph. I knew that he could keep silent, but
he could never lie to me.

'I have found you again,' he said, at the very moment when I thought I had lost him.

A door few open, and everything in me rose to meet the future. Life was waiting for me. There were apples,
grass blowing wildly in the wind, the faces of men and women, the brilliant light of summer, there were the

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 innumerable blues of the sky, and all this was given back to me.

There would be other Elizabeths, their cheeks smeared with butter, other drawings powdered with black
dust, other canvases smelling of good, fresh varnish.

Everything had not been destroyed after all. Hope lled me like a blessing.

François kept the drawing in his hands, but his eyes left Sandra's face for mine, and I knew it was me he loved
on that small sheet of paper. Before, he had no need to speak for me to understand that his love was leaving
me.

Tonight he could be silent. His love was there. I read it in his eyes which sought response from mine.

There was no decision to be made, and no victory. All was well between us.

We were alone in the room. Sandra had gone out, taking Elizabeth and the dog, but we had not even noticed.

We found them in the kitchen. Sandra had settled Elizabeth on her chair and tied her bib under her chin.

She also had understood everything, and this was more touching than a reproach. As we came in she asked
me without looking up what she should give Elizabeth for supper. Then François suddenly remembered that
the Vergaux were coming to have a picnic meal with us in less than an hour. He had forgotten to tell us.

It was a fortunate diversion. We were obliged to get busy, put Elizabeth to bed quickly, lay two extra places,
open tins of preserves. The Vergaux came, bringing with them a blast of cold air, a noise, some roast pork,
and bottles of wine. But above all they were there, with their friendly unawareness interposed between reality
and ourselves. Without them, what sort of an evening would

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 it have been between three people who knew everything about each
other without having to say a word? I took part in the conversation, but
from time to time my heart beat faster. I thought of the expression on
François' face, a voice said: 'I've found you again.' How simple life was!

The Vergaux had hardly left when we went up to bed.

We did not delay like the evening before. Sandra told us she was dead
tired and kissed us outside her door with complete naturalness. Acting
was her profession. I followed François into our room. I would have liked
to dream in the darkness about the miracle that had happened to me,
while talking quietly. But François put his arms round me with such
violence that tears came into my eyes. I had wanted everything to remain
pure that night because of the girl sleeping alone in the room across the
landing, but I could not resist the appeal of François' lips.

I clasped my hands behind his neck, and the only thing I could do for
Sandra was to keep silent.

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 Twelve
On the Monday morning we dropped Sandra at her hotel.

She was very sweet! ... And that silence in the car on the way back to Paris! One thing only had seemed to give her
pleasure and bring her to life. She had asked me for the drawing. I regretted parting with it. But I could not refuse her.

'You'll do others ... she said.

We heard nothing for two days. Then the telephone rang. Why does it always hurt me to think of that tele phone call?

François answered it. I raised my head when I heard him talking in Italian. He said nothing, but handed me the receiver.
Too high-pitched, too gay, too happy, Sandra's voice seemed to be reciting a lesson. A lesson which rang false. Like
the necessity for going back to Rome the very next day. She had wasted so much of her time in Paris, surely a day more
or less would not have mattered.

'We must go to the station,' said François.

I did not see her again except on the platform.

Nothing could have been more sad than the public leave-taking of the new star. Dressed in a tailored suit, she had her
mink over her arm, her jewel-case in her hand, on her nose the incognito dark glasses, and on her glorious hair which
she had rolled up, a ridiculous prima-donna hat. She was presiding over a mountain of suit-cases, assisted by ve or
six men who seemed to know her very well, but were unknown to us. She greeted us hastily

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 but affectionately whilst busily giving instructions to her friends, who were being very of cious in French
and Italian. The box of orchids in its cellophane wrapping arrived at exactly the right moment, preceding
Robin, who was mopping his brow. He kissed Sandra paternally, took her aside for two minutes, then
hurriedly shook hands all round.

"I am very worried,' he said, "I don't see the photo-graphers."

Fortunately they soon arrived. Sandra got into the train, took off her glasses, and gave the traditional
wave in the doorway. The platform became more crowded. Sandra climbed down again. The men shook
and kissed her gloved hand. With an excited gesture Sandra tore off her hat and gave it to one of them.

'Passengers for Lyon, Lausanne, Brigue, Domodossola, Milan, and Rome, take your seats, please!'

The men climbed in and out of the train in a panic carrying the mink, the jewel-case, and the orchids.
Sandra came over to us. I turned my head away as she kissed François. When we embraced, I saw that
her mouth was trembling. Her beautiful eyes gazed deep into mine.

There were so many things that remained unspoken! She took my hands and continued to hold them.

'Attention

au départ!' said the loud-speaker, and we were obliged to let go.

Sandra jumped into the train and her hair began to come unrolled. She quickly ran to a window and again
smiled for the photographers. The train moved off. Robin and the other men called 'Arrivederci!' Sandra
put her head out, her familiar face framed by her owing hair.

"Good-bye!' she cried.

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 And it was me she looked at, since I alone knew the cause of the tears which made her eyes shine.
The train began to go faster, buffeting her black hair, which was soon lost in the night.
It was the end.
"We've nothing more to do here,' said François.
Men do not stand still as we do. Time passes more quickly for them, and their sorrow is often effaced by
a departing train. As for me, I felt weak, as after one of those operations which affect the centre of life
itself.
Sandra's friends had disappeared
'Excuse me, I'm in a great hurry,' said Robin.
Other trains were about to leave. People were meeting each other. We went to the exit. A newspaper
vendor was pushing his little cart along the platform. Fixed to his basket was a magazine with a
photograph of Sandra on the cover. She was in a white dress, with one arm raised and a happy smile on
her face.
Rome salutes Paris through Sandra Tiepola,' read the caption.
I stopped, for the picture brought back a memory:
Look, François, that photo was taken the night of the Gala when Sandra saw us and waved ...?
"Do you think so?' said François, dragging me away.
But I was sure of it. The same picture greeted us at the station bookstalls, at the newspaper kiosks. A
wave of sadness swept over me as I walked between the smiling lines formed by the face of the girl who
had not been able to become my friend.
When we reached the car, François put his hand on my shoulder with the in nite tenderness of someone
who is preparing to make a confession.

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 'Get in, sit down, shut your eyes, and let me guide you through the night.'

I obeyed without a word. So the hour had come.

"I have a story to tell you,' said François taking his place at my side. 'It's rather a long story, but to tell it I
must have peace and quiet and a log re. We'll go to an inn.' I did not shut my eyes as he asked me, but all
the same I saw nothing of the road we followed. I awaited François's confession. It seemed as if I were
already hearing it.

I did not ask him any questions. Not even in front of the log re. Not even at dinner. I let him order for me.
I looked at him. He seemed moved, embarrassed, shy. I took two or three spoonfuls of soup. He put his
hand over mine.

'Listen, my angel, I must tell you ...

I xed my eyes on a black spot far ahead of me. Further away than Sandra's owing hair. I was not
afraid, I was in pain. François had begun to speak. All at once I heard what he was saying and my eyes
came back to him.

'I am determined the book shall be a success,' he said passionately. 'It must be. I need it, darling. I am at
the age when a man must succeed in what he undertakes.' A train was speeding southwards carrying my
thoughts with it, but for a long time now, François had been living quite a different adventure. He was in
love. In love with a new novel. Women could pass through his life, he would not change. He was xed on
his profession and his future. All the same I felt sure he had loved her. I listened attentively to his story,
looking for traces of Sandra in these new dreams.

But there was no mention of the girl with long black hair. There was only a man who wished to become

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 himself, and was struggling for his existence in a big city.
Perhaps that had been Sandra's effect on him. She had given him an intense desire to succeed. But this
desire was so detached from her that my suffering seemed entirely groundless. Was it possible that I had
been dreaming during that long, that ominous month of September?
"You're not listening to me,' said François.
'Oh yes, I am!'
I looked at him as I would have looked at Chauvry after a re. And I was surprised to nd everything still there.
I had before me the same man who had demanded so much of me when I rst knew him six years before. I had
loved him. I loved him. And I always owed him every-thing. He wanted my whole attention every moment of his
life. Because he was a real husband. Mine. Poor San-dra. So much regret at leaving a man unaffected. Poor
little ones. Men are made for achievement and we are made for them.
place.
As François continued to talk everything fell into its
Order restored.
The year slipped by and my troubles subsided. September came again and passed. Now spring is before us.
"Do you love me?'
I cannot get accustomed to this order of things. I ask:
And François replies: "Yes?'
I look around me and am surprised to nd that people and things are faithful to their promises.
Marie is dead. The trees beside the mill are growing.
Elizabeth is growing in their shade. There is the pure air of the elds and the battle eld of Paris.

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 There is Sandra, poor star, perilously balanced on the fragile pediment of her temple.

same breath. But from the depths of this happiness there rises the musty smell of the
decaying leaves of September, and I see once more the face I shall never draw again,
but which I shall keep faithfully in my mind during all my life beside the man I love.

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