She went from a four-month suspended sentence at first instance to an eight-month sentence with no remission on appeal, and as a result of her sentence being added to her police file she would lose her accreditation to work at the Department of Justice. She was being punished by removing her ability to earn a living. They were obliterating her.

It was when I emerged from that hearing (and not before, contrary to what one might think), with this distressing image permanently seared into my mind, that I started to think about the de Rignys’ money and how we could put it to good use.

Were I to inherit that fortune, I was already considering that not a single cent would end up in the coffers of a state that was so obtuse, a state whose leaders, no matter who they were, would always use it for the short-term gratification of the masses in order to be re-elected and would never put forward an alternative model of society.

Frankly, it wasn’t difficult to be an anarchist. If ever I needed further prompting, all I had to do was conjure up an image of the French government featuring the mug of the meat industry union’s representative or that of the National Federation of Farmers’ Unions, both of whom had been parties to the proceedings brought against my dearHildegarde, and that was all it took. And seeing as patrimony and capital were making a big comeback in the context of everyone’s prospects, I told myself I really should move with the times.

Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Paris, Versailles

1 January 1871

Peace reigned in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, a Prussian-held town of 57,000 inhabitants, 17,000 of whom were French.

Once the brutality of the initial days had subsided, cordial relations were established between the residents of Saint-Germain and their occupiers. Whereas the homes of other families had been filled to bursting with soldiers, the de Rignys had received only Colonel von Gibintz and his aide-de-camp, whom they had installed in Auguste’s room and in the garden shed respectively.

Wilhelm von Gibintz had nothing but positive attributes: he played the piano, quoted Victor Hugo with a delightful Teutonic accent, took every opportunity to apologise for occupying France, mourned his homeland where he was keen to return and where his beloved Gerda awaited him, bemoaned the obstinacy of the Parisians who were preventing him from doing so, and accompanied Jules on his jaunts to the numerous brothels that had sprouted like mushrooms in this town that was now no more than a garrison.

On this, the first evening of the year, with the women having hurriedly retreated to their bedchambers after supper so they might bury themselves in one of those dreadful, immodest novels of which they were so terribly fond, his son-in-law Jules and von Gibintz having taken themselves off for some revelling, and Ferdinand busy with his own affairs, Casimir gazed into the fire and reflected on the times in which they were living.