The House I Loved Read Online Free PDF Page A

walked home.
    The next day, lo and behold, there he was in my very street, at the water fountain. He must have followed me. He was holding a red carnation, one that had probably tumbled out of a buttonhole.
    “For you, madame,” he said solemnly. And as he walked toward me, I noticed his peculiar gait, his stiff right leg dragging behind him, giving him the clumsy stance of an outlandish dancer. “With the humble and devoted compliments of Gilbert, your servant.”
    With that, he swept off his hat, revealing his curly tangle of hair, and bowed down to the ground, just as if I had been the Empress herself.

 
     
    HE IS THE ONLY person I talk to these days. It is a time of isolation and strife, and I thought I would find it more rigorous. My pampered life as your wife and widow, as a gentlewoman of the faubourg Saint-Germain, with a maid and a cook living under my roof, did not make this new existence all the more arduous. Perhaps I had been expecting it. I am not afraid of the discomfort, the cold, the dirt.
    The only thing I am afraid of is not having enough time to tell you what I need to reveal. Not having enough time to explain. Let me try. Listen. The truth is that I love you, and that whilst you were slipping away, I could not tell you. I could not voice either my love or my untold secrets. Your illness prevented this. Little by little, over the years, you changed into a sick old man. It did not happen overnight, it was a slow process. But toward the end, you had no patience. You did not want to hear. You were in another world. Sometimes your mind was startlingly clear, especially in the mornings, and you once again became the real Armand, the one I missed and longed for. But it never lasted. The confusion in your brain took over again, relentlessly, and I would lose touch with you yet again.
    This has no importance, Armand. I know you are listening to me now. You are all ears.
    Gilbert, who has been resting by the heat of the enamel cooker, interrupts my writing to tell me about the destructions in the neighborhood. The magnificent Hôtel Belfort on our street is down. There is nothing left, he says. He watched it all. It did not take very long. A swarm of men, armed with their pickaxes. I listen, horror-struck. Madame Paccard has gone to live in Sens with her sister. She will never come back to Paris again. She left last fall, when we understood there was nothing to be done. Gilbert continues. The rue Childebert is empty at present, he tells me. Everyone has gone. It is a chilly ghost land. I cannot imagine our animated little street in that way. I tell Gilbert that the first time I set foot in this house was to buy flowers from Madame Collévillé. This was nigh on forty years. I was nineteen years old. This seems to amuse him. He wishes to hear more.
    I remember it was a spring day. In May. One of those fresh, golden mornings, full of promise. Mother wanted lily of the valley on a whim. She sent me to the rue Childebert flower shop, as she did not like the look of the white buds wilting in the market baskets.
    Since I was a child, I had always reveled in the small, shady streets surrounding the church. They were peaceful and quiet compared to the loud bustle of the place Gozlin, where I lived. My brother and I had often taken strolls in this neighborhood, not far from our abode. There was less traffic here, hardly any carriages. People would line up at the Erfurth water fountain, nodding to each other politely. Children would play happily, watched over by their governesses. Shop owners had endless conversations on their doorsteps. Sometimes a priest in his long black robe, a Bible tucked under his arm, would be seen hurrying to the nearby church. On summer days, when the doors of the church were left open, hymns and prayers could be heard all the way down the street.
    When I walked into the flower shop, I saw I was not alone. A gentleman stood there, a tall, strong man with a fine face and dark hair. He was