Mordiane remembered a slim, somewhat melancholy little blonde girl saying to him tenderly, ‘My darling love …’ He could feel his pulse quicken at the mere thought of her. She had loved him, madly, passionately for three weeks. Then when she became pregnant during the absence of her husband, the governor of a colony abroad, she had run away in terror, then gone into hiding until the birth of the baby whom Mordiane had taken away one summer night and whom neither of them had ever seen again.

She had died of tuberculosis three years later in her husband’s colony where she had rejoined him. And now here in front of Mordiane was their son, with this grating accent of his, saying: ‘This particular plot, Monsieur, is very special …’

Mordiane could hear the other voice, as soft as the breeze, murmuring, ‘My darling love, we must never part …’ He remembered the deep, gentle devotion in her blue eyes as he now looked into the round, blue, but essentially expressionless eyes of this ridiculous little man who took after his mother, yet … with every second he could see more and more of a resemblance in the tone of the man’s voice, in his gestures, in everything about him. He did resemble her, but as a monkey resembles a man. And there were other characteristics he had inherited from her, too: a thousand irritating, even revolting traits which were indisputably hers. The Baron was in anguish. This terrible similarity, increasing horribly and unbearably, began to assume the proportions of a nightmare torturing him with dreadful remorse.

He stammered: ‘When can we go and see this plot?’

‘Well, tomorrow, if you like.’

‘Fine, tomorrow. What time?’

‘One o’clock?’

‘Very well.’

The child he had met in the drive appeared at the open door and shouted ‘Papou!’ No one took any notice. But Mordiane was already on his feet, his legs unsteady, desperate to get out of the place! That ‘Papou!’ had struck him like a bullet. The garlicky, southern ‘Papou!’ touched a nerve in him! Oh how delicate had been her fragrance all those years ago!

Duchoux was seeing him to the door. ‘Is the house yours?’ asked the Baron.

‘Yes, Monsieur, I bought it not so long ago. And very proud of it I am too. I was born a love-child, I’ll make no bones about it. Proud of that too. I’m a self-made man, I am. Don’t owe a thing to anybody. Everything I’ve done, I’ve done on my own.’

The child, still standing where they had left him, called out again, this time in the distance ‘Papou!’

Mordiane, panic-stricken and trembling in every limb, could not wait to be gone. He’s going to guess, any minute, who I am, he thought, he’s going to clasp me in his arms! He’ll plonk a garlic-flavoured kiss on each cheek and call me ‘Papou’!

‘Till tomorrow, then, Monsieur.’

‘One o’clock it is.’