“I return to my regiment tomorrow. Please, let me hear from you. Remember: 5th Battalion, Gazan Division, 9th Hussar Regiment. We must see each other again,” I heard him say, hastily.
The clockmaker had put fresh water in the washbasin. Just as I was squatting down to wash myself, Maryse appeared, ascending the spiral staircase, holding a candlestick aloft to light her step. “Well, well, the missing girl,” she said happily. “Your uncle and I have been all over Strasbourg looking for you. Thank God we decided to come by here again. The clockmaker told us that you’d arrived just a few minutes ago and. . . . What happened to you?” she asked, concerned, seeing the pinkish water running down my legs.
“It’s nothing. . . . You know. . . . Women’s concerns,” I stuttered, trying to cover myself with my hands. “Please, leave me for just a moment.”
But as she was leaving, Maryse spotted my dress, thrown over the back of a chair. One by one, she plucked up half a dozen straws of hay that had gotten caught in the cloth. “I see,” she said, perplexed. “I see,” she said again, this time with a sigh, crumbling the straw between her fingers, letting the golden dust fall through her hands. “Your uncle is waiting for me downstairs,” she said, not looking at me. “I’ll be out for a while. Sleep well. We’ll talk tomorrow.” And, lifting the hem of her dress, she disappeared down the dark mouth of the staircase.
I awoke late the next morning. The sun was hitting me full in the face, making me blink. I heard the clamor of horses and carriages from the street below, and I guessed that the troops were already leaving the city. Maryse, already dressed, was reading a book in the chair where I’d left my incriminating clothing. I closed my eyes again, pretending to still be asleep. More than ashamed, I felt completely incapable of withstanding reprimands and laments. “What time is it?” I asked at last.
“Late,” Maryse replied, without raising her eyes from her book. “It just struck eleven. While I finish this chapter, read the letter over there, by the washbasin.”
“Is it from Robert?” I asked, leaping out of bed.
“Is there someone else you’ve not told me about?” she teased from behind her book.
“But it’s addressed to my uncle,” I said, reading Uncle Charles’ name.
“You have his permission to read it. Robert left it here at dawn, before going off with his regiment. Read it. Its subject matter concerns you.”
I have received some good news in my lifetime, but as hard as I search through my memories, I cannot find a single letter that has brought me such happiness as that one, despite its brevity.
“Robert is asking for my hand!” I cried. “He wants to marry me! Can you believe it? Isn’t it a miracle?” I said, jumping up and down. Mad with joy, I fell on the bed to read the letter again.
“A miracle? Why? Who better than you could he possibly marry? You’re young. You’re tall and pretty. You have it all. And if that weren’t enough, you have properties and money. Your uncle told me. You kept it quite a secret, you little imp. Don’t think one comes across many young women like you out here on the road.”
Listening to Maryse talk, a bit too spontaneously, it seemed to me, I began to suspect that she had played an active role in the matter at hand.
“You spoke with him, didn’t you?”
Maryse looked down at her book without answering.
“You spoke with him last night. Why would you do that?” I reproached her.
“Very well, yes,” she said, closing the book.
“You begged him to marry me. No,” I said, correcting myself, “you waved my dowry in front of his nose. That was it. Am I right? Why did you play matchmaker behind my back? I would have so much preferred for him to want to marry me of his own accord,” I said, incensed, and buried my face in the pillow.
“Robert is my friend,” I heard her say, coolly. “We met under what were very painful circumstances for me. I owe him a great deal. I went to look for him at the café and we spoke as friends. That is all.”
Surprised by what I was hearing, I rolled over on the bed to look at her.
“You owe him a great deal?” I said, incredulous. “He’s told me nothing.”
“Last year, when I arrived in Boulogne, he was of great service to me,” she continued. “One day I will tell you all about it. But not today.”
“Then—”
“When I say that he is my friend, I mean only that: my friend,” she interrupted. “Yes, we talked for a while. Not long. He had to be ready to leave at dawn. I merely advised him that, if he had ever considered getting married, he shouldn’t miss the opportunity that you so beautifully embody. Of course we spoke of money. Dowries and inheritances are not State secrets. And don’t think that I had only his well-being in mind, my friend. After your adventure last night, which I do not judge, your life is no longer the same. Yesterday it was Robert, later it could be another dashing officer, and then another and another, and so on. And along that chain of sabers and mustaches, the risk of finding yourself enmeshed in duels, in gambling, in coarse dealings, in betrayals and humiliations. What can I tell you? I know what I’m saying. It’s something that, unfortunately, I know all too well. The society in which you’ve chosen to become a woman is the army, my dear. And, I must add, the army in time of war. You’ll see when the battles begin, when they start to count the dead and wounded, the heroes and cowards. Right now, we’re all rational beings. But just wait until the smell of gunpowder hits. Then you’ll see. People change. They live in the moment. You must see for yourself to understand.”
Maryse stood up abruptly and, turning her back to me, leaned against the windowsill. Her words had stunned me. Little by little, I began to feel afraid. I turned over on the bed again and pressed my face into the pillow. I closed my eyes and wished I had stayed in Foix. My uncle had been right. I had no business living this kind of life: discomfort, little privacy, constantly moving from one place to the next. Battles. Death. Blood. I began to cry. I could feel the hot dampness of my tears on the pillowcase. And it would be so easy to return. All I had to do was wait for Pierre and Françoise to come with the carriage. They wouldn’t be long now. But in thinking of the carriage, of the leagues that separated me from the Ariège, I understood that life was not a clock whose hands could be moved backwards with the nudge of a finger. Foix would never again be what it had once been. The carriage had rolled across many days and many roads. Along the way I had lost Aunt Margot and my girlhood; I had also found Uncle Charles, Maryse, and Robert. For better or for worse, time had marched on, and it was now no longer possible to return, if, by return, I meant a reencounter with my bucolic early life. There was nothing to be done. At the end of the day, I had people here. In Foix, I had no one. Resigned to moving forward, I raised my head, wiped my tears away with the back of my hand, and asked Maryse: “What does Uncle Charles think of all of this? Do you think he’ll give his consent?”
“Robert has a good reputation,” she replied, turning toward me. I could see by her tender expression that she had guessed at my feelings instantly. “He fought in a duel. I don’t know if you knew. A personal matter with a Captain of the Cazadores regiment, a sinister man, a duelist of ill-repute who relished humiliating any woman unfortunate enough to be within his reach. But in Robert, he met his match.”
“So he fought over a woman. Was it Corinne?” I asked, curious.
“No,” Maryse replied, sharply. “Or, perhaps. . . . I don’t know,” she wavered. “If you ask him, he’ll tell