CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Servants’ Quarters, 6 Mademoiselle Crespi

OLD MADEMOISELLE CRESPI is in her room on the seventh floor, between Gratiolet’s flat and Hutting’s maid’s room.

She is lying in bed, beneath a grey woollen blanket. She has a dream: an undertaker, eyes gleaming with hatred, stands opposite her in the doorway; in his half-raised right hand he proffers a pointed, black-edged card. His left hand supports a round cushion on which two medals lie, one of which is the Stalingrad Hero’s Cross.

Below him, beyond the doorway, lies an Alpine scene: a lake, a frozen and snow-covered round, bordered with trees; the mountains seem to slope directly down to its further shore, while beyond there again show unfamiliar peaks, all in full snow, overtopping each other against the blue sky. In the foreground, three young people are climbing a path which leads to a cemetery, in the middle of which a column surmounted by an onyx basin rises from a clump of oleander and aucuba trees.