only practical advantage of their presence was that, in order to spare their mother, they went to identify the body in the morgue. Which she appreciated.
They also tried to intercept any articles in the regional press reporting the tragic fall, scarcely imagining that the titles “Accidental Hiking Death,” or “Victim of his own lack of caution,” were a boon to Gabrielle, because they confirmed, in black and white, that Gab had died and she was innocent.
There was one detail however, that displeased her: when she got back from the coroner’s office her eldest daughter, eyes red, felt obliged to whisper in her mother’s ear: “You know, even dead, Papa was very handsome.” What on earth was she on about, that kid? Whether Gab was handsome or not, that was no business of anyone’s but Gabrielle, and Gabrielle alone! Hadn’t she already suffered enough because of it?
After that remark, Gabrielle kept herself to herself until the funeral was over.
When she went back to her house in Senlis, neighbors and friends came to offer their condolences. While she greeted her neighbors with pleasure, she quickly became exasperated with having to tell the same story over and over only to hear them echo identical platitudes. Behind her sad, resigned expression, she was boiling with anger: what good was it getting rid of her husband if she had to talk about him all the time! All the more so that she was impatient to run up to the third floor, knock down the wall, ransack his hiding place and uncover the very thing that was tormenting her. Couldn’t they just hurry up and leave her alone!
Their private mansion, very nearly a fortified château, was like something out of a book of fairytales, for under the tangle of climbing roses there were a multitude of turrets, crenellations, arrow slits, sculpted balconies, decorative rosettes, sweeping staircases, windows with gothic points and colored panes. With experience, Gabrielle increasingly relied on her visitors’ exclamations to determine how little culture they might have, and she had classified them into four categories, from the barbarian to the bore. The barbarian would give a hostile glance at her walls and grumble, “Kind of old, here”; the barbarian who thought he had some culture would murmur, “This is medieval, is it not?”; the truly cultured barbarian would detect the illusion: “Medieval style, but built in the 19th century?”; and finally the bore would cry out, “Viollet-le-Duc!” before boring everybody with a running commentary on each element that the famous architect and his workshop might have deformed, restored, or invented.
There was nothing surprising about a residence like this in Senlis, a village in the Oise, to the north of Paris, which featured many such historical dwellings on its hillside. Alongside stones dating from the time of Joan of Arc or buildings erected in the 17th and 18th centuries, Gabrielle’s home seemed, in fact, to be one of the least elegant, for it was recent—a century and a half—and its taste was debatable. Nevertheless, she had lived there as one half of a couple from the time she had inherited it from her father, and she found it very amusing that her walls denounced her as a nouveau riche, for she had never considered herself to be either rich or newly so.
On the third level of the dwelling, which would have enchanted Alexandre Dumas and Sir Walter Scott, there was a room that belonged to Gab. After their wedding, in order to make him feel well and truly at home when he moved into her house, they had agreed that he would have the total use of that part and Gabrielle would have no say in the matter; she had permission to go and fetch him there should he be late for any reason, but otherwise she was not to go there.
There was nothing exceptional about the place—books, pipes, maps, globes—and it offered only minimal comfort in the form of torn leather armchairs, but there was an opening in the thick wall,
They also tried to intercept any articles in the regional press reporting the tragic fall, scarcely imagining that the titles “Accidental Hiking Death,” or “Victim of his own lack of caution,” were a boon to Gabrielle, because they confirmed, in black and white, that Gab had died and she was innocent.
There was one detail however, that displeased her: when she got back from the coroner’s office her eldest daughter, eyes red, felt obliged to whisper in her mother’s ear: “You know, even dead, Papa was very handsome.” What on earth was she on about, that kid? Whether Gab was handsome or not, that was no business of anyone’s but Gabrielle, and Gabrielle alone! Hadn’t she already suffered enough because of it?
After that remark, Gabrielle kept herself to herself until the funeral was over.
When she went back to her house in Senlis, neighbors and friends came to offer their condolences. While she greeted her neighbors with pleasure, she quickly became exasperated with having to tell the same story over and over only to hear them echo identical platitudes. Behind her sad, resigned expression, she was boiling with anger: what good was it getting rid of her husband if she had to talk about him all the time! All the more so that she was impatient to run up to the third floor, knock down the wall, ransack his hiding place and uncover the very thing that was tormenting her. Couldn’t they just hurry up and leave her alone!
Their private mansion, very nearly a fortified château, was like something out of a book of fairytales, for under the tangle of climbing roses there were a multitude of turrets, crenellations, arrow slits, sculpted balconies, decorative rosettes, sweeping staircases, windows with gothic points and colored panes. With experience, Gabrielle increasingly relied on her visitors’ exclamations to determine how little culture they might have, and she had classified them into four categories, from the barbarian to the bore. The barbarian would give a hostile glance at her walls and grumble, “Kind of old, here”; the barbarian who thought he had some culture would murmur, “This is medieval, is it not?”; the truly cultured barbarian would detect the illusion: “Medieval style, but built in the 19th century?”; and finally the bore would cry out, “Viollet-le-Duc!” before boring everybody with a running commentary on each element that the famous architect and his workshop might have deformed, restored, or invented.
There was nothing surprising about a residence like this in Senlis, a village in the Oise, to the north of Paris, which featured many such historical dwellings on its hillside. Alongside stones dating from the time of Joan of Arc or buildings erected in the 17th and 18th centuries, Gabrielle’s home seemed, in fact, to be one of the least elegant, for it was recent—a century and a half—and its taste was debatable. Nevertheless, she had lived there as one half of a couple from the time she had inherited it from her father, and she found it very amusing that her walls denounced her as a nouveau riche, for she had never considered herself to be either rich or newly so.
On the third level of the dwelling, which would have enchanted Alexandre Dumas and Sir Walter Scott, there was a room that belonged to Gab. After their wedding, in order to make him feel well and truly at home when he moved into her house, they had agreed that he would have the total use of that part and Gabrielle would have no say in the matter; she had permission to go and fetch him there should he be late for any reason, but otherwise she was not to go there.
There was nothing exceptional about the place—books, pipes, maps, globes—and it offered only minimal comfort in the form of torn leather armchairs, but there was an opening in the thick wall,
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