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angry mobs were parading down the streets? And the fuss with her laundry, how perfectly starched it had to be. Remember the end of the day? Dinner at six. The streetlights were illuminated one by one by the whistling lamplighter. On winter nights, we settled by the chimney. Germaine handed me a chamomile tisane and you sometimes savored a drop of liqueur. How tranquil, how calm those evenings were. The gleam from the lamp trembled ever so slightly, diffusing an appeasing rosy glow. You were most concentrated on your game of dominoes and then your reading. I, with my embroidery. The only noise to be heard was the crackling of the flames and your labored breath. I miss those undisturbed nightfalls, Armand. As dark deepened, and as the fire slowly petered out, we would retire. Germaine would have slipped the customary hot water bottle into our bed. And each evening heedlessly mingled into morning.
    How well I see our sitting room in my mind’s eye. It is but an empty shell now, stripped and bare like a monk’s cell, but I still see it like it was. This was the first room I set foot in when I came to meet your mother. Spacious and high-ceilinged, with emerald-green leaf-pattern wallpaper, a pale stone fireplace. Thick bronze-tinted damask curtains. Four large windows with colored panes, gold, crimson and violet, facing out to the rue Childebert. From there was a view down to the Erfurth fountain, where all our neighbors came for their daily supply of water. Fine woodwork, a delicate chandelier, crystal doorknobs, refined engravings of hunting scenes and countryside, lush carpets. An exotic cactus plant filled an alcove. On the large mantelpiece, a Roman marble bust of a young man, an ormolu clock with an enamel dial and a pair of gleaming silver candlesticks under glass shades.
    That first day with your mother, when I came to visit her in the afternoon, I imagined you growing up here, as your father had before you. Your father died when you were fifteen, mine did when I was two, in a riding accident. I do not recall mine, and you did not often mention yours.
    “My husband was impetuous and short-tempered,” whispered Maman Odette over the coffee tray. “But Armand is such a patient son. His is a gentler, sweeter nature.”
    I know your mother accepted me from the start, from the very day you introduced me to her. She was wearing a russet velvet dress with a high, heart-shaped bodice and flared sleeves, sitting in her favorite armchair, the large green one with the fringes, her knitting in her lap. She smiled at me with such kindness that it warmed my heart.
    “So you have a brother, dear? What is his name?”
    “Émile,” I answered, as you handed me a slice of brioche on a pretty plate. Your eyes never left my face. And your mother looked on, glowing with happiness, her plump fingers working at her knitting.
    She became a second mother to me in a mere couple of months, even before we married at Saint-Germain. My own mother, Berthe, had remarried when I was seven, a brash, loutish man, Edouard Vaudin. My brother Émile and I detested him. What a forlorn childhood we led on the place Gozlin. Berthe and Edouard lived only for themselves. We held no interest for them. Maman Odette gave me that most inestimable of gifts: she made me feel loved. Your mother treated me like her own daughter. For hours we would sit in the sitting room each time I came to visit, and I would listen with rapture to her tales, her talk of you and your youth, and how appreciative she was of you, her only son. She described the toddler you once were, the bright scholar, the loyal son, putting up with Jules Bazelet and his tantrums.
    The first time you kissed me was in the stairway, near the creaking step, on our way up or down, I cannot recall, but I do remember that first kiss and the mad leap of my heart. For a man of your age, eight full years older than me, you were bashful. But I rather liked that. It soothed me.
    When I came to visit your mother