Bonne Fête du Saint Valentin! Valentine's Day at the Chateau
| Sunday, February 14, 2021
Dear Friend,
The snow is swirling softly down in big fat flakes, as blowsy and soft as a peony just past its prime. The park surrounding the Chateau is silent; the hardy winter birds, the mésange charbonnière and the rouge-gorge, the robin, are hidden in their nests.
Inside, the crissement of the logs in the library fire, and the strains of Viola’s voice, humming and singing snatches of song while she rustles around upstairs, are the only sounds on this winter afternoon. I’m reading the last pages of a short novel, Une Vie by Guy de Maupassant, who was born and grew up on the Normandy coast a couple of hours north from the Chateau de Courtomer. It begins with a young woman’s debut in life, from the day she leaves her convent school, dreamy and eager, unable to discern the illusion of love from its true substance. It’s subtitled L’Humble Vérité, the humble truth. And it’s a grim tale.
“Un amour naît, vieillit comme le reste, et tombe, » wrote Maupassant. «A love is born, grows old just like everything else, and falls away.” His character gives an irritated shrug, rolls a cigarette, and strolls away, leaving the young lady to weep alone.
The 17th-century Protestant Temple at Chateau de Courtomer in the snow.
“But if I may say so, Maman, this is hardly the book to read on Valentine’s Day” said Henry, coming into the library with an armload of wood and a current of wintry air, his cheeks red and his eyes bright with exercise, “Maupassant never takes the happy view. You remember Bonne Maman.”
I had been given a book of Maupassant’s short stories by dear friends when we first came to Normandy.
“The greatest writer in the French language,” said Loïc.
“Besides Victor Hugo,” he added, regretfully. Hugo was a great writer and a great romantic, all heart. Maupassant, born several generations later, sought le réalisme.
We had been living in France for a several months when the children’s grandmother, Bonne Maman or Mamie, joined us with her older sister, Tante Jacqueline. Intent on improving her French, Mamie took up the thick volume with alacrity. For the next few weeks, we became accustomed to sighs and exclamations.
“What is it, Mamie?”
“They’ve thrown the dog down the well!”
She shut the book and compressed her lips firmly, a steely glint in her eye. Mamie had seen much of life and little shocked her. Maupassant’s tales of peasants pushing the old grandmother into the fire so they could inherit a strip of land across the lane brought a wry chuckle. But cruelty to animals! She took a dislike to Maupassant. She knew he might not be wrong about human nature, but she didn’t read books in order to dwell on the subject.
“Well, I’ve been working on great love songs,” announced Viola cheerfully, coming down the back stairs into the room. She has developed “le livestream” on-line to replace live performances. “I think Edith Piaf invented the love song with Hymne à l’Amour!”
Hymne à l’Amour is a triumphant elegy to the enduring power of a great romantic attachment.
“I’ll do Je Suis Malade, too, of course,” she added thoughtfully. This song is about unrequited love, despair so intense you can’t eat, smoke or sleep. It’s interpreter, the singer Dalida, was known in part for an exceptionally tragic personal life.
“Rather opposing feelings,” Henry commented. Viola wrinkled her brow.
“But that’s how love can be,” she said. She looked down at her long fingers, one encircled by gold set with three diamonds. We followed her gaze, wondering at her thoughts.
“Love is more than anything in the world.” She went back out to the piano in the grand salon, from whence we heard the joyous lines sung by Piaf so many years ago:
Le ciel bleu sur nous peut s’effondrer
Et la terre peut bien s’écrouler
Peu m’importe si tu m’aimes…
The blue sky may collapse
And the earth may fall away
Nothing matters if you love me…
Henry and I smiled at each other.
“Forget that Maupassant,” he said. “Listen to this from Victor Hugo.”
“Naît-on deux fois ? Oui. La première fois, le jour où l’on naît à la vie ; la seconde fois, le jour où l’on naît à l’amour. »
“Are we born twice? Yes. The first time, the day we are born into life; the second, the day we come alive to love.”
And with these thoughts, dear friend, may you too enjoy une belle fête du Saint Valentin!
A très bientôt, au Château de Courtomer,
