What I haven’t told you yet is that Marthe was beautiful. Her skin was creamy and her chestnut hair was thick and wavy, and fell effortlessly into flattering styles. And her eyes! Those blind brown eyes were deep and intelligent, and the shape of almonds. I know that’s a cliché, but in her case it was absolutely true; the cliché might have been coined to describe her. If you looked at her face, there was no hint she was blind, no way of telling as there was, straightaway, with some of the other girls at her school. She had a gentle manner, she was always popular, and she was so eager to learn.
No wonder she got her chance at the perfume factory. As soon as she left the school for the blind at eighteen, she was taken on to be trained as a scent-maker. We were all delighted for her; and in that way, though not of her choosing in the first place, simply her determination to find some positive outcome from the terrible hand she had been dealt, she was the first of the line to leave Les Genévriers and find work in one of the new industries that were drawing the young to the towns.
Some years ago, I wrote to Marthe again about selling off the farm, but there was no reply. It turned out that the gentle soul had a heart of iron, after all. And as Les Genévriers can never be sold without her consent, I remain here.