The Catalans - Patrick O’Brian

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day, probably quite soon, Mimi is going to want the license for herself or her husband. It is a thriving concern, and nowadays, since the war, there are so many people with claims to a tobacconist’s license–resistants, deportees, victims of atrocities, and so on, as well as the wounded men and soldiers’ widows – so many of them that Mimi will find it very difficult unless she has some real power to stand up for her. Xavier, of course, could arrange an affair of that kind in two minutes. She has courted him for years with her singing in the choir; but obviously this is a far better method of securing his interest.’

      ‘I thought the Pou-naous were Protestants.’

      ‘They are. But not Mimi: she was always a much more sensible woman than her sisters and she always preferred the church to the temple, even when she was a child. Then she quarreled with the old pasteur – something to do with the Christmas singing, I believe – and never went to the temple again. She was married in church.’

      ‘She never persuaded her sisters or Madeleine to leave the temple?’

      ‘Oh no, there was no zealous, burning conversion, you know; she was just like the other people here – displeased with one, they drift to the other, but a lukewarm drift. No, her sisters, especially Thérèse (Dominique never goes anywhere) continued to go to the temple: sometimes Madeleine would be in the church – she helped Mimi decorate the chapels sometimes – but in general she went to the temple, and she was married there.’

      ‘That’s bad.’

      ‘From the point of view of Xavier, you mean? Yes. There would have been little danger if she had been married properly: I will say this for Xavier, he is not one of your modern, lax, easy-going Catholics. And even now I do not think he would put his principles aside, mad though he is.’

      ‘No doubt you are right. But tell me, how did it all begin? That is what I have never understood from your letters.’

      ‘It began very simply. When her husband left her she was very, very unhappy. Her family would not leave her alone for a second, and she often came to see me, not so much for comfort as for refuge. I was foolish enough to encourage her to spend more and more time typing for Xavier – occupation and distraction, I thought. I say I was foolish enough to do so, and if you wish to be very modern and clever you may say that is why I resent the present situation so bitterly. I would not own this to anyone else, Alain, but I was a fool, a fool.’ She clasped her hands with exasperation. ‘I never thought for a moment – but of course I should

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