Orville attempted to analyze his uncle's face: was he betraying himself, hurting Ronde?
Bombers roared over the house, but when it was quiet he continued:
"I have visited Dad's grave. I've been re-thinking ... why is he dead and why am I living?"
The colonel shook his head, and puffed his cigar.
"You've something to live for," he said. "You have your Jean. It's a matter of weeks, Orville, because Nazi Germany is collapsing ... only a matter of weeks. You must manage to stay alive. Look, you are fighting criminals, not soldiers. There's a prison named Auschwitz where the Nazis are murdering thousands of Jews, innocents, women, kids. German factories employ slave labor..."
The clock on the mantel chimed three: Claude was laying a fire in a fireplace and glanced at the clock and then at the men: he had placed liqueurs on the table but they were unaware.
Momentarily, Ronde thought of Lena and Orville playing together as kids: they had meant much to each other: their relationship had pleased almost everyone who knew them: when he radio-phoned General Meade to grant a leave to Orville it was this relationship Ronde was remembering. Meade had met both Lena and Orville when a guest at Ermenonville, in '38.
"Jeannette wants to marry," Orville went on. "I'm not sure how, on faith ... my Jean. Can I tell you that there are no real compensations? It's illusion, self-delusion, or nothing!"
Aunt Therèse came in and embraced them: pale, very sad, she took a rocker beside her husband, a shawl about her shoulders.
"I'm glad you've found each other," she said with childish abruptness. It was comforting to her to have the men together, it eased her loss for the moment; it brought to mind a summer six years ago when there had been a family reunion for her birthday, people from Marseilles, Paris, St. Cloud, Senlis. She saw in Victor's face that reunion: why, they were growing old in Ermenonville!
"It wasn't so long ago that I was religious, I was a girl who secreted her crucifix under her pillow, who loved her rosary. It wasn't fear or superstition. I thought of Christ as my friend: I counted on him ...
"You men count on guns. God's never been real to you; we all know that those who go to war are disregarding thou shall not. I had Christ as my friend in those days..."