“Indeed,” he added gallantly, if not quite truthfully, “had it not been for my father’s sudden and unexpected death, and my regiment’s posting to the east of France, I might have asked for your daughter’s hand many years ago. But before my battle dispositions were made, another lucky man stepped in and married her.”

Despite his age, old Jules was quite lively. He took a great interest in the estate, and she discovered that he knew more about farming than she had realized. Before he left, he told her: “I was so pleased and proud when you took on Joséphine. But now I am happy to see you here.” He’d smiled. “You did not know, in the days when you were a little girl, how much pleasure I used to take in visiting the farms with whom we used to do business. For it’s the countryside—the farms and villages as well as the estates like this one—where every Frenchman belongs. This is the true France.”

Marie also took up riding in earnest. Roland gave her instruction, and she soon made progress. Each morning she would ride out with the head groom, and in no time she was taking small fences. There was an enthusiastic hunt in the local forest: mostly stag, sometimes boar were hunted. The riding itself was not arduous, and though it was mostly men taking part, a few of the women rode. One day Roland suggested that Marie might like to ride with him at the next meet, and with some uncertainty she agreed. But when the head groom asked anxiously if she was still intending to hunt, she went to Roland and asked him if he thought the groom was trying to suggest that she should not. To her delight, Roland only chuckled.

“It’s the other way around,” he said. “He’s so proud of you that he’s been boasting about it to all his friends. He’s only terrified you won’t show up.”

“How do you know?” she asked.

“Because he told me.”

Having organized the decorating of the house, Marie had turned her attention to the library. It contained some fine old volumes from the eighteenth century, but almost nothing since. So she set to work. “You’re indefatigable,” he laughed, as she imported the classics from the nineteenth century and some of the more interesting productions of modern literature—none of which he had any intention of reading. But he didn’t stop her.

Of more interest to Roland was another, longer-term project Marie undertook.

The de Cygne family archives were not in good order. “My father meant to sort them out,” Roland told her, “but he died before he got very far.”

There were boxes of letters tied with ribbon in cabinet drawers. There were trunks of unsorted documents in the attic, and lead-lined strongboxes of parchment, going back to the sixteenth century.