If my mother had known what small seed of longing she was sowing in my brother's being, to develop into a folie de grandeur that nearly broke my father's heart, and certainly was partly responsible for his death, she would not have taken Robert so often to the chateau at Cherigny, to be fed and fondled by the marquise. She would have put him to play among the hens and pigs in the muddied farmyard of le Maurier.