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Page 34.
 "Thank you. I'll take it at the side door. Don't want to get the hallway dirty."
Wiping sweat from his brow, he ambled along the garden path and came to a little flagstone walk behind the house. He stopped a moment to run a brass faucet and clean at least some of the soil and dirt from his hands.
The receiver lay off the hook on the mail table in the little back hall. Hilaire picked it up and happily said, "Bonjour?"
"Professor, this is Mélusine Poncelet."
Her voice sounded tragic. He frowned. "Yes, dear?"
"I am afraid I have terrible news for you."
He knew, right then. Tears started to flow from his eyes before she said it. His knees grew weak, and he slumped into a wooden chair with hard arm rests.
Pierre.
A big part of his life ended for him at that moment; he felt as if he had been shot, along with his beloved only child, who had brought so much joy into his life. To lose that child was unthinkable.
As Mélu Poncelet spoke—quavering, in tears, but bravely, trying to be strong for him—he felt as if the same bullets had pierced his own body. He saw himself becoming a smoky shade, a living ghost, walking into the ante-chamber of a gray afterlife. He thought of the wavering ghosts who had come to visit Goethe's Faust, or the shades of deceased warriors visited by Ulysses in the Odyssey; not to mention Aeneas' descent into Avernus in the middle book of the Virgil's Roman epic; or Dante's story of a descent into the Inferno. All the literature he had ever read now made his new reality out of those dramatic and crushing visions of the gray afterworld.
"Romain and I are rushing to see you," Mélu said.
"Bless you. Thank you," he whispered. He sat by himself, all alone in the world now, and wept brokenly with his hands over his face. Hot tears flowed between his fingers. He cried more than he had when Marie had passed away. That was cancer, and Marie had lived a full life. He had thought to himself, standing by the urn of her ashes in the cemetery in town, that she was fortunate—she would not live to bury her husband. Now he envied her all the more, because she would not have to bury her only child. Or had she gone to her reward, knowing in the afterlife what was to come? Hilaire Sander cried despairingly.
At the same time, a tiny flame of rage leapt to life deep in his soul. It was a flame that would nurture itself and grow stronger as he rededicated his life and old age to the one thing that mattered now—the cause of equality, liberty, and happiness for all people, not just the greedy, cruel medieval overlords who arose in every age and on every stage as part of the Human Condition.
The gun eased off. "No tricks."
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Thank you for reading the first half (free, what I call the Bookstore Metaphor). If you love it, you can (easily and safely at Amazon) buy the whole e-book for the painless price of a cup of coffee—also known as Read-a-Latte (hours of reading enjoyment; the coffee is gone in minutes, but the book stays with you forever). You can also get those many hours of happy reading from the print edition for the price of a sandwich (no, I don't have a metaphor for that, like a 'sandwich metaphor?'). To help the author, please recommend this book your friends, and also post a favorable (five star!) review at Amazon, Good Reads, and similar online reader resources. Thank you (JTC).
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