Silences, or a Woman's Life. Marie Chaix

it. She didn’t have the heart to pose among baskets of carnations and hydrangeas, and asked for a plain backdrop. Her dress is dark-colored and belted at the hips. Not a single jewel. Her hair is cut short; her gaze is infinitely remote. He stands very straight, his face emerging sharply from the collar of his uniform, in which he seems a little stiff, with his gloved hands clasped in front of him. They don’t look like a couple. And yet they adore each other.

      Alice’s mother had been getting worse and worse, and the engagement would have been announced under rather gloomy circumstances had not the fiancé’s parents arrived, bringing with them in their shiny limousine all the glamor of Parisian chic. The cases of champagne that the future father-in-law solemnly unloaded made a strong impression on Alice’s grandmother, who had made peace with her daughter for the occasion. Behind her pincenez, her contented glance shifted from the fiancé’s mother’s silver foxes to his father’s elegant fur-lined overcoat, taking in on the way, among other things, the pearl necklace, diamond earrings, and the gold watch chain.

      Once the ball was over, bringing matters to this point hadn’t been simple. “She’s much too young.” “He hasn’t finished college.” “He’s a chemical engineer,” Anna complained, thinking of the crocodile. “He’s a nice enough looking young man,” Grandmother declared, “but he has no moustache, my dear, and that is not proper.”—“You had to choose a foreigner for your wife,” his father grumbled—he was a decorated veteran of World War I for whom Alsace was still part of Germany and who—most important—had picked out for his son a plump heiress from his own neck of the woods. “You shouldn’t have sent me to Mulhouse,” the son retorted. “I’ve lost my heart—I won’t settle for anyone but her.” As for Alice, she threatened to jump off the roof of the Strasbourg cathedral . . . And so they were engaged.