Mid-February 2025
The character of Pierre Richarde, father of Camille, in THE DAWN/L’AUBE is one of my favorite fictional creations. This personnage is the loving father who must reconcile his love for his lost son, his love for Camille, for her daughter Gabrielle, and for Guillaume de Vallon — with his patriotic love of France and for the Victor of Verdun, Marshal Petain, who has illegitimately become the Head of Vichy France.
Pierre is a widower who has been hectored by his older daughter, Simone, to reside in Lyon with her and her family, not because that’s what’s best for him; but because it’s yet another way to hurt Camille.
The journey that Pierre takes in arriving at many painful truths dovetails with the journey that Camille undergoes in facing her very uncertain future. Their paths are separate, at first, but, in time, they join, moving not only in the same direction, but with the force of love.
When I first “realized” this fictional character, from 2008-2011, my aim was to depict the essence of a loving father, and grandfather: a wise, elderly gentleman who bears the scars of many emotional wounds, the most grievous of which is the loss his son in combat at Verdun.
The slow, agonizing steps that Monsieur Richarde takes in arriving at the full truth of a now-disgraced hero are monumental. He asks himself:
« Nous avons pleuré et nous avons souri, pensa Pierre. Ces moments du cœur léger, destinés à soulager le cœur lourd, est-ce que Philippe Petain enviait aux Français ? Cet homme n’avait même pas d’enfants, certainement pas un fis mort au combat pour lequel il faisait le deuil. Petain, pleurait-il la France, ou pleurait-il un passé qui l’avait dépassé ? »
“We have cried and we have smiled, thought Pierre. Did Philippe Petain begrudge the French these moments of lightheartedness, intended to relieve the heavy heart? This man did not even have children, certainly not a son who had died in combat for whom he was mourning. Petain, was he mourning France, or was he mourning a past that had passed him by?”
Philippe gradually, deliberately, but inevitably rises to the merciful state of heroism that permits him to humbly surrender to his ripened state of heroism through his humble surrender to his grievous sorrows. He thus is able to aspire toward the joys of a new phase of his life.
Camille quietly and confidently helps her father to undertake that journey. She thereby forges her own path toward the unknown and the unexpected in life, and in love.
Chapter 26
Pierre Richarde se retira dans la chambre de sa fille, la pièce où il resterait pendant ce séjour d’hiver. Il souhaitait changer de tenue un peu tôt pour cette veille de Noël, et ensuite faire un petit somme. La messe de minuit le maintiendrait éveillé cette nuit-là. Il enleva son pantalon de gabardine grise et de son cardigan de laine bleue foncée pour enfiler son costume de tweed à chevrons marrons foncés. Il porta toujours sa chemise en coton blanc.
Il alla à la petite commode et ramassa d’un petit plat oval de Delftware une paire de boutons de manchette en or 24 carats avec des incrustations de nacre. Il poussa les boutons de manchette par les ouvertures des poignets de la chemise. Pierre aimait chèrement ces vieux boutons de manchette. Il utilisa ensuite le miroir de courtoisie en bronze antique sur la petite commode, et il mit assidûment une cravate en soie d’or foncé avec un nœud semi-Windsor.
Avec soin, il mit une pince à cravate sur la mi-partie de la cravate. Après avoir rangés ces vêtements , Pierre s’allongea sur le lit pendant vingt minutes, espérant faire un petit some.
La chambre était froide, mais cela ne dérangea pas Pierre. Il était accoutumé à un manque de chauffage dans sa chambre à Lyon. Il savait qu’au cours des années à venir de cette guerre, son corps devrait s’adapter aux privations et aux pénuries de chauffage et d’aliments. C’était le manque d’espoir qui dérangeait le plus ce Français. Il n’aimait pas penser aux années qui s’étendaient devant lui, comme une route incertaine et défoncée. Pierre Richarde n’avait pas peur de la faim, ni de la douleur, ni de la malade, ou même de la mort. L’avenir de la France, en revanche, le troublait profondément
Il ferma les yeux, mais il ne s’endormit pas. Il pensa à Alain. Son fils aurait maintenant quarante-quatre ans. À chaque jour de fête, et à l’occasion de l’anniversaire de ce soldat français tué, Pierre se souvenait de ce fils avec larmes et avec une grande révérence.
L’ombre de la Grande Guerre assombrit innombrables de recoins dans les cœurs des gens Français. Pierre Richarde n’avait pas entièrement émergé de la noirceur du coin dans son cœur qui faisait continuellement le deuil de la mort de son fils unique à Verdun, la grande mutilation de la Grande Guerre. Et maintenant que la Grande Guerre avait été renommée la Première Guerre mondiale, Pierre, à l’âge de soixante-six ans, avait commencé à laisser lentement filtrer la lumière dans ces recoins ténébreux de sa mémoire. Une grande partie de cette illumination avait été provoquée au fait que le vainqueur de Verdun fut rebaptisé le chef d’état de France.
Le maréchal Petain avait été un grand homme. Même le général Charles de Gaulle l’avoua, bien qu’il tempérât son admiration de manière acerbe par ce constat qu’il tira de la guerre de Rif en 1920 : « Le maréchal Pétain était un grand homme, il est mort en 1925 ».
Le maréchale Petain ne fut plus un grand homme, et il no sonna pas l’appel du clarion à la grandeur de la France. Pendant des années, il avait sonnée l’appel de la médiocrité et de l’apaisement. La cloche avait alors sonné pour la France, et cet ancien héros n'avait rien fait pour empêcher la cloche de sonner de façon monotone le glas de sa patrie. Il avait très vite consenti aux coûts punitifs de l’Occupation allemande.
Pierre Richarde, ancien entrepreneur et propriétaire de son propre magasin, il savait encore faire des calculs et additionner des colonnes de chiffres. Les chiffres des coûts de l’Occupation qui seraient à la charge des Français ne s’additionnaient pas pour Pierre, ou plutôt, ils les firent.
Les sommes totales étaient de la confiscation d'un taux alarmant. La France était en train d’être saignée financièrement, commercialement et moralement. Pierre se sentait abattu chaque fois qu'il pensait aux travailleurs de France, devenus des esclaves pour l'Allemagne. Il percevait également que les jeunes de France, la prochaine génération de Français, étaient en train d’être affamés, non seulement de nourriture, mais aussi de croyance en la France ; de croyance en la bonté ; de croyance en un monde sain et juste.
Pierre Richarde retreated into the bedroom of his daughter, the room where he was staying during this winter sojourn. He wished to dress a bit early for this la Veille de Noël, and then to take a short nap. La Messe de Minuit would keep him up late that night. He meticulously changed from his gray gabardine pants and dark blue wool cardigan into his dark brown herringbone tweed suit. He kept on his white cotton shirt.
He walked to the small dresser and picked up from a little oval Delftware dish a pair of 24-karat gold cuff links with mother-of-pearl inlays. He put the cuff links through the openings in the cuffs of his shirt. These links were very old and Pierre valued them dearly. He then used the antique bronze vanity mirror that stood on the small dresser, and he diligently put on a dark gold silk tie in a half-Windsor knot. Carefully, he placed a tie bar across the middle portion of the tie. After Pierre put away his worn clothes, he stretched out on the bed for twenty minutes, hoping to nap.
The room was cold, but Pierre did not mind. He was accustomed to scanty heat in his bedroom in Lyon. He knew that, during the coming years of this war, his body would have to adjust to privation and shortages of heat and food. It was the shortage of hope that most disturbed this Frenchman.
He did not like to think of the years that stretched ahead of him like an uncertain, rutted road. Pierre Richarde did not fear hunger or pain or illness or even death. The future of France, however, troubled him deeply.
He closed his eyes, but he did not fall to sleep. He thought of Alain. His son would now be forty-years of age. During every holiday and on the birthday of this slain French soldier, Pierre recalled this son tearfully and with great reverence.
The shadow of the Great War darkened many corners within the hearts of the French people. Pierre Richarde never fully emerged from the darkness of the corner within his heart that continually grieved the death of his only son at Verdun, the great mutilation of the Great War. Now that the Great War had been renamed World War One, Pierre, at the age of sixty-six, had begun to slowly allow the filtration of light into these recessed corners of his memory. Much of this illumination was prompted by the Victor of Verdun having been renamed the Head of State of France.
Marshal Petain had been a great man. Even General Charles de Gaulle avowed this truth, although he had acerbically tempered his admiration with this observation that he’d gained from the Rif War of 1920: “Marshal Pétain was a great man; he died in 1925.”
Marshal Petain was not great anymore, nor did he sound the call for greatness for France. For years he had sounded the call for mediocrity and appeasement. The bell had then tolled for France, and this former hero had done nothing to stop the bell from monotonously ringing its death knell for his patrie. He’d very quickly agreed to the punitive costs of the German Occupation.
Pierre Richarde, former entrepreneur and proprietor of his own shop, could still perform calculations and add columns of figures. The numbers from the costs of the Occupation that were to be borne by the French did not add up for Pierre, or rather they did. The sum totals were alarmingly confiscatory. France was being bled monetarily, commercially, and morally.
Pierre felt downcast whenever he thought of the workers of France, becoming slave labor for Germany. He also perceived that the youths of France, the next generation of Frenchmen, were being starved, not just of food, but of belief in France; belief in goodness; belief in a sane and just world.