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Chapter 32

When the old, paralyzed Louise caught sight of Anna, she managed by some superhuman effort, to emit from her voiceless body a series of unearthly shrieks which froze the last drop of blood in the veins of the two boys.

Anna had hardly a chance to rest before Marguerite announced that she had already had the notary prepare adoption papers, and that Anna was henceforth the legal daughter of Louise Rousseaux and the rightful heir of both sisters; when the time came, the vineyards and orchards on both sides of the hill would be hers.

Anna looked at the old sisters in disbelief. All this talk of adoption and inheritance seemed fantastically unreal to her, especially at a time when life itself lay bleeding, expiring on the roadways of France; when that distracted mother on the roadside near Orleans still clutched to her breast her murdered child; when the death-rattle in thousands of throats drowned out the sweet singing of birds, shamed the growing things in the fields, darkened the very face of the sun; when the steel-visaged Angel of Death stalked the innocent civilian to the very door of his home, burnt his house, annihilated him. How could there be talk of notaries and adoption papers and inheritances at a time like this! How can one speak of law when the very codes of law are torn and the judges in refuge? When the human being envies the beast, and the beast shrinks from him as from a monster.

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