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“The baby!” she exclaimed, appalled.

I ran to the pantry to wake up Augustine. We boiled water and we took out sheets and bath towels from the armoires.

“Poor Madame Luze!” Augustine sighed. “How she suffers!”

Does she love us? Does she at least love my young sisters, who came into the world and grew up before her very eyes? In a prominent family, what is the place of a house slave who called the babies mademoiselle and conceded to their every whim for fear of being beaten? Jean Luze is more polite and respectful to her than we are.

She came and went, her black face sullen, responding to Félicia’s moans.

“Here, Mademoiselle Claire,” she told me, “here is the boiling water; it must be taken to Madame’s room.”

Holding Félicia’s hand, wiping her sweaty face, I felt my heart contract with bitterness: she was the one bringing Jean Luze’s son into the world.

In the living room, he and Annette were alone. That thought helped me forgive Félicia, who, instead of me, was about to bring the man I loved one of the greatest joys in his life.

The labor was turning out to be difficult. I stayed by Félicia’s bedside until six in the morning. Jean Luze was so nervous that he was not able to eat anything. Annette suddenly started acting mysteriously. I can’t tell if something’s happened between them.

Before my eyes my sister’s body was drawn and quartered. She was moaning and screaming as I patiently wiped her forehead.

“Claire! Claire!” she cried, hanging on to me.

Toward seven o’clock, she let loose an awful hoarse scream, and Dr. Audier, leaning in, cigarette at the corner of his mouth, welcomed the child onto the great mahogany bed where my mother had given birth to her three daughters in his care.

“It’s a boy” he told me.

He was so ugly I was sure I could never love him.

“And Félicia?” Jean Luze asked, opening the bedroom door.

“Everything went well,” Dr. Audier replied. “Wait a little before coming in.”

The child breathed feebly, half-purple. The doctor slapped his bottom and plunged him in warm water. He wriggled, then screamed.

“Give me some cotton, Claire,” Audier said to me. “I need a lot of cotton.”

He made him lie on a thick layer of cotton bedding and wrapped him in a blanket.

“He’s small,” he added, “keeping him warm will help.”

The news about the baby is alarming. Audier can’t promise anything. Félicia of course knows nothing. She is more serene than ever, patiently drawing milk from her swollen breasts with a pump. She got up today for the first time, doctor’s orders, and she took a few steps around the room. Jean Luze forces himself to smile for her. Fortunately, she’s noticed nothing! What a temperament! She’s stuffed with straw. She’s a scarecrow. I know this man’s every expression and can predict every reaction. How can she not sense his mortal fear? She eats with great appetite while he barely touches anything, though I myself take the trouble to prepare his favorite food. For him, Annette is as nonexistent as I am. He doesn’t even see her anymore. He lives in perpetual anguish, an anguish so overwhelming that it steals him away from me. He doesn’t even listen to music. He doesn’t care for anything. Yesterday, when he was in the living room smoking a pipe, I went in on tiptoes to put a Beethoven concerto on the turntable. He hardly listened for a minute, before getting up to worry over the baby still swaddled in cotton and more ugly than a little monkey.

Being spurned is making Annette sick. She seems to suffer as much as I do. She worries me. I forced her to live too intensely. She is not used to suffering and it has torn her apart: she looks like a madwoman in her eccentric dresses and her excessive makeup. She doesn’t eat anymore. Jean Luze doesn’t even seem to notice her absence at the dinner table. The tension is straining my nerves. Does his whole world consist of Félicia and the little runt she gave birth to?

There are guests in the living room. Eugénie Duclan and her pharmacist are among them. It so happens I have a prescription from Dr. Audier for Félicia. I give