Manon of the Spring - Truth and Trust in Relationships
Cesar:
I swear on that cross that I received no letter except from my father and Anglade.
Delphine:
In that case, it's a tragedy.
Cesar:
Why?
Delphine:
Swear again that you're not lying to me.
Cesar:
I swear it. Who wrote to me?
Delphine:
Florette.
Cesar:
Florette Camoins?
Delphine:
There was no other Florette.
Cesar:
Are you sure?
Delphine:
I, myself, gave the letter to the mailman.
Cesar:
I'd never have forgotten a letter from her. I still have two faded notes she wrote to me, and a black comb from her hair. It's true. When I came back, she had left the village. She was married to the blacksmith in Crespin and she already had a child.
Delphine:
How could that letter have gotten lost?
Cesar:
Over there, we moved from place to place. Sometimes our food and even our ammunition didn't reach us. Some letters may have been lost too. But if I had received that letter, I would still know it by heart.
Delphine:
If that's true, it's dreadful.
Cesar:
You think she loved me?
Delphine:
Imbecile.
Cesar:
She never told me so not even after what happened between us one night in Anglade's barn.
Delphine:
That's how she was. In her letter she told you that she was pregnant.
Cesar:
What?
Delphine:
Yes.
Cesar:
You had left three weeks before. She told you if you wrote to her father promising to marry her she would wait for you. She could have shown her letter to the whole village and nobody would have dreamed of making fun of her.
Cesar:
Are you sure?
Delphine:
The poor girl couldn't sleep. She tried to lose the baby with devilish potions. She jumped from high rocks in the hills — but nothing worked. Then she started hating you. She went to the dance at Aubagne where she found the blacksmith from Crespin. So she left the village and no one ever knew when the child was born.
Cesar:
Was it born alive?
Delphine:
Alive, yes — but it was a hunchback.
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