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fine little town, and the weather was very nice and you wouldn’t believe it, they had bullfights and a fiesta there twice a year, just like in Madrid. . . .
    Louise listened, astonished. After he stopped talking, she stared at him, wild-eyed, the fresh morning light in her face.
    “ Mais, t’es fou! ” she cried, nearly shouting.
    “Not at all,” Phillipe said, a faint smile on his lips. “Or at least not at the moment. I’m afraid some of my ancestors were definitely crazy. I might as well let you know that now—it’s a calculated risk. Tends to skip a generation or two, but when it comes, it hits hard and usually later in life. So there’s always the chance I’ll go crazy someday. But at this moment, I’m completely sane.”
    She looked up at him, her eyes wide and sea blue in this fresh light. Suddenly, she didn’t feel tired at all.
    “You really have a château?”
    “Modest in size, but yes. The de Noyers have been part of the landscape around here for at least seven hundred years. There’s the ruins of a twelfth-century keep on the grounds. I have my car in the car park, I can take you right now if you like. It’s not so far.”
    She threw up her hands, exasperated. “This is ridiculous!”
    “Of course.” Phillipe smiled. “But not more ridiculous than suicide.”
    “I can’t marry you! Absolutely not!”
    “Why not?”
    “For one thing, your age.”
    “I’m forty-four—how old are you?”
    “Twenty-four.”
    “That’s not so bad, is it?”
    And it wasn’t, in France. For the French, such an age discrepancy was entirely acceptable. But Louise, who had perhaps spent too many years in the United States, wouldn’t answer him.
    They walked along now in silence, the tide sparkling below, the seabirds fighting one another for minnows in the surf, and stopped again at a small guard tower. They had reached the end of the public ramparts, as far as they could go without mounting to the walls of the abbey itself, and the way was blocked from here. They stood for a long time staring out over the sea in silence, but were really looking out with breathless trepidation over the uncertain vistas of a shared life.
    “I know nothing about you,” Louise said, her voice hoarse. “You’ve let me talk and talk and you’ve said practically nothing—” She stopped herself. “You see? It’s impossible.”
    “What do you want to know that you didn’t find out in bed last night?” He grinned. “Just marry me and find out the rest later.”
    “So, would I have a title?” she said, trying to sound cynical. “Madame la Duchesse, perhaps?”
    “There was a title,” Phillipe admitted. “Vicomte de la Tour Grise. But the tower is long gone and the title no longer exists, as far as I’m concerned. We haven’t used it since the Revolution.”
    “ Merde, un aristo! ” Louise very nearly spit.
    “I’m a citizen of the Republic, just like you,” Phillipe replied calmly. “I work, I have a job. I’m in the army. Doesn’t pay enough to live decently; it’s more of a family tradition with us. A vocation. One of my ancestors fought with Turenne at Sinzheim, another with Bonaparte at the Nile. And so on.”
    “ Militariste! ” Louise jabbed a finger in his direction, belligerence rising in her voice. “Fascist! You’d probably vote for Le Pen! Eh bien, moi , I’m a creature of the Far Left. You might as well say I’m an anarchist, antiglobal, antiwar. So you see, it would never work out with us. I must have someone of my own politics.” She was looking for anything, desperate for any reason to turn and walk away.
    “Good.” Phillipe nodded, refusing to be discouraged. “Because I usually vote Left—Socialist Party. Depending on the candidate, of course—the important thing is character. But . . .” He hesitated. “. . . You should hear the whole story, everything. I went to Saint-Cyr, you see. The top five officer candidates out of every class have the honor of applying for a