Read The Foundling Boy for Free Online Page A

at the astounding average of seventy kilometres an hour, seeing nothing but the road ahead, the dust, the bends, the trees that whistled past his ears.
    La Sauveté had survived his absence. Driving through the gates, he saw Albert limping in front of a wheelbarrow being pushed by one of the village boys. Victoire Sanpeur was strolling hand in hand with Michel and Antoinette through the rose walks. Antoinette ran to her father and climbed up to sit next to him. They did a lap of the park and pulled up at the steps of the house as Jeanne was coming out with Jean in her arms. Marie-Thérèse showed her surprise in an offended frostiness.
    ‘Where were you?’ she said.
    ‘I went to see Geneviève.’
    ‘I see.’
    ‘Do you object?’
    ‘Not at all. I assume you’re joking.’
    Antoine bent over Jean, who stared at him with wide eyes, and gently squeezed his cheek. The baby smiled and held out his arms.
    ‘Extraordinary!’ Marie-Thérèse said. ‘Such a difficult child, and look at him smiling at you.’
    ‘He’s not difficult,’ Jeanne countered. ‘He just doesn’t like everybody.’
    ‘He’s not wrong!’ Antoine said.
    Marie-Thérèse flinched, and said with feigned gentleness, ‘I thought that children could always sense whether you really love them or not.’
    Antoinette drew herself up, her eyes thunderous.
    ‘But Papa does love children!’
    Tears welled in her eyes.
    ‘Don’t you?’ she said.
    ‘Yes,’ Antoine answered, distracted by the appearance of Victoire dragging Michel behind her. He succeeded in wriggling out of her grip and ran to bury himself in his mother’s skirts.
    ‘Maman!’ he yelled, trembling with fright. ‘I don’t want
him
to take you away in his car.’
    ‘There’s no danger of that, my darling. No danger at all!’
    ‘What an idiot,’ Antoinette said.
    Antoine caught the Martiniquan’s gaze. She lowered her eyelids, fringed with long, curly lashes. It was a yes, but he would have to wait until tomorrow morning, at five o’clock, after his bowl of coffee laced with calvados, on the hard day bed in the library. He sighed.

2
    I mention 1920 only as a reminder. It no longer interests us. But let us touch briefly on the things that were bothering Albert at that time. Paul Deschanel, preferred to Clemenceau by both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate as president of the victorious French Republic, was found wandering in his nightshirt at a level crossing after the official train had passed by. He was suspected of being a delusional lunatic and unfortunately the suspicions proved correct. Forced to resign, he was replaced by Alexandre Millerand. In the United States, matters were no better: the president had disappeared. Intoxicated by the ovations he had received and his own verbal incontinence, Woodrow Wilson shut himself in his room and refused to see even members of his administration. His wife served as intermediary, deciding world affairs between two rubbers of bridge. The League of Nations – upon which, despite the United States’ refusal to join, Albert had pinned his hopes – did not prevent the Soviets from invading Poland, the Greeks from attacking Turkey, or the French from ‘pacifying’ the Rif. Albert lived from one disappointment to the next. When he held young Jean in his arms he sang to him, as a lullaby,
    And all you poor girls
    who love your young men
    if they reward you with children
    break their arms, break their legs
    so they can never be infantrymen
    so they can never be infantrymen.
    Jean would never be a soldier. It was a promise, made on oath.
    We jump forward then, to August 1923, three years later, to find ourselves again at La Sauveté, one fine afternoon when the sun sparkled on the sea that was visible from the first-floor windows. Monsieur du Courseau had lifted the edge of the lace curtain to admire his garden. Seated in a tub armchair, he kept his leg, encased in its plaster cast, up on a stool. A month earlier, as he had tried to