This time she spoke in a voice trembling with emotion, anguish and some other indescribable but powerful feeling. It seemed like an almost religious desire to confess, to say everything, to talk about things which she had been bottling up for years and about people the mere mention of whose name had such an overwhelming effect upon her.

“Yes, Henri de Sirmont. We’re talking about my brother.”

I raised my eyes and looked at her in astonishment. Then all of a sudden it hit me.

The whole affair had in its day scandalized the entire aristocracy of Lorraine. A beautiful, rich young girl had eloped with a non-commissioned officer from her father’s regiment. He was a handsome fellow of peasant stock who looked well in the blue uniform of the Hussars. She had no doubt noticed him on parade, picked him out from all the others and fallen in love with him. But how she had managed to speak to him, how they had been able to see and get to know each other, how she had dared let him know that she loved him no one was ever to know.

No one suspected a thing and it happened quite without warning. One night when the soldier’s tour of duty had come to an end he disappeared with her. They were hunted but never found. No news was ever received from them and eventually it was as if they were dead.

And here she was living in this sinister valley.

Now it was my turn to speak: “I remember very well. You must be Mademoiselle Suzanne.”

She nodded. Tears had welled up in her eyes and were now coursing down her cheeks. Then, indicating the old man standing motionless on the threshold she said: “That’s him.”

I realized that she was still in love with him. She still saw him with the same eyes as always.

“Well at least you’ve been happy?” I asked.

“Oh yes! Very happy! He has made me very happy! I’ve never had a single regret.”

I gazed at her, feeling moved, astonished and marvelling at the power of love. This wealthy girl had followed a peasant and become a peasant herself. She had adapted herself to this basic, charmless existence with no luxuries and no comfort of any sort. She had conformed to his simple ways. And still she loved him. In her bonnet and her thick cotton skirt she had become a country wife. She ate a broth of cabbage, bacon and potato from an earthenware bowl off a scrubbed wooden table, sitting on a simple rush-bottomed chair. At night she slept beside him on a straw mattress.