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the day in one of the richest houses in the town. Valérie was at L’Innovation. Her mother, Madame Smet, who had nothing to do but look after their doll’s house, used to come and meet her after work, with a peculiar old woman’s hat on her head, the face of a Dresden doll, and mittens from which blotchy pink fingers poked out.
    â€˜Don’t forget the sugar in the carrots, Valérie. Désiré can’t eat carrots without sugar.’
    Ã‰lise did not know what to do with herself. It was the first time in her life that she had been immobilized in her bed, forced to feel useless. She was incapable of reading the newspaper Valérie had handed her, but she glanced automatically at the front page and suddenly felt surrounded by an oppressive silence.
    She said nothing. She could not say anything, even to Valérie, for all that she confided everything to her, including things she would never talk about to Désiré.
    On the front page of the paper there was a photograph of a pale young man with taut features, and she was sure that she recognized it, she was sure that it was this mysterious face that she had glimpsed with Léopold in the passage where she had gone to fasten her suspender.
    THE ANARCHIST OF THE PLACE SAINT-LAMBERT
    She had known all morning that there was something unpleasant in the air. She did not dare to cry in front of Valérie who would not understand. What on earth had Léopold been up to?
    â€¦ Yesterday, as the result of a thorough investigation, the police succeeded in identifying the person responsible for the incident in the Place Saint-Lambert. He is a certain Félix Marette, of the Rue de Laveu, whose father is one of our best-known and most highly respected policemen. Every effort is being made to trace Félix Marette, who is on the run …
    â€˜The poor things,’ sighed Valérie, seeing that Élise was looking at the paper. ‘It seems that they had no idea, that they made tremendous sacrifices to send their son to school. And when his father heard about it he said: “I’d rather see my son dead.” ’
    But what about Léopold? What had Léopold, who was a full-grown man, been doing plotting with that boy in a dark passage?
    There, now! The stove went boom, some ashes fell into the tray, the onions started browning, and the baby turned over in his cradle.
    â€˜Valérie, don’t you think it’s time to change him?’
    Léopold, the eldest of the Peters children, had known the family in its hey-day. He had been at the University, and he had gone hunting with young men of the nobility, with armament manufacturers and notabilities.
    And then, all of a sudden, he had decided that he wanted to be a soldier. At that time the only men in the army were those who had drawn an unlucky number in the conscription lottery, and Léopold, when he was twenty, had drawn a lucky number. But people had the right to sell themselves, to take the place of somebody who had been unlucky in the draw.
    That was what he had done. He had donned the close-fitting uniform of the lancers. The army still employed canteen girls at that time, and the one attached to his regiment, a certain Eugénie, who had Spanish blood in her veins like the empress whose name she bore, was a magnificent specimen of womanhood.
    Léopold had married her. At the same time he had cut himself off from the whole world. Somebody had seen him working as a waiter at Spa, where Eugénie had spent a season as a cook.
    â€˜Mind the pins, Valérie. I’m terrified of pins! I always think of a baby in the Rue Hors-Château who … Somebody’s coming upstairs … There’s somebody knocking at the door, Valérie! …’
    It was Félicie—and Élise’s eyes filled with tears, she could not say why—a furtive Félicie who announced straight away:
    â€˜I managed to get away. I simply had to come and give him a