Free The Tale of the Rose by Consuelo de Saint-Exupery

and cross Spain on our honeymoon.”
    I said yes to everything.
    Valencia . . . the people in the little inns . . . the laughter of our young lives . . .
Part Two
The South of France, 1931
6
    A NTOINE REALLY WAS UNLIKE any other man. I told myself I was insane: I had a house in France and a fortune, thanks to the generosity of my late husband who had made me his heir. Why torment myself further? Everything could be so simple . . . I had friends in Paris, and if I gave up the idea of marrying Tonio I could keep my fortune, for Gómez Carrillo had been rich, he had published books in Spain, in Paris; everything would be easy for me if only I kept his name.
    But I always went back to Tonio. In my mind, I had already begun to organize our life together. We would go and live in my house, the Mirador, in the south of France; it had been Gómez Carrillo’s final home. Tonio would finish his book, and then we would travel to Italy, Africa, China. He would be a pilot again, for the Compagnie Aéro-Orient. Plans ran through my head . . .
    We had said nothing to each other about our difficulties. In every village we passed through, he gave me presents. “I want you to lose everything you have,” he said, “so that every single thing you’re wearing will have come from my hands.”
    He was thin; he looked as if he had suffered. The first evening we were together again, we couldn’t leave Almería. Our feelings were too strong, and mingled with them were shyness and pain.
    “I have only one question to ask you,” he murmured, pale and worried, trembling with tenderness. “I haven’t slept for the last several nights, though you know I’m never bothered by a lack of sleep, but only by the hours that separate me from you. My puma was unhappy on the boat—I couldn’t feed it very well, and it tried to bite one of the sailors—I’m sure they’re going to put it to sleep. But I was even more unhappy than the puma. I couldn’t think of anything but your face, your way of talking. Speak to me, speak to me! I beg you. You’re not saying anything, why? Do you think I haven’t suffered enough? The phone calls I made from Buenos Aires were torture, and you never wanted to speak loudly or distinctly. Why? Did you always have a visitor with you? But I’m mad, I have no more time for unhappiness, I’m with you again now and no one in the world will ever be able to separate us. Will they?”
    “Yes, Tonio,” I said quietly. “Love is like faith. I left because you didn’t trust me. Your family, too, they were asking for information about me, which, you must understand, was very painful to me.”
    “Listen, little one, let me explain. Where my parents live, in Provence, the men marry women of their own background, whose parents know their parents and grandparents, and so on from generation to generation. Someone new, in our country, it’s like an earthquake, and so they wanted more information, in order to know, to be reassured. In Paris it’s less unusual, the young men from good families marry rich American girls. But in Provence, no—we’ve kept the old ways. My poor dear mother lost her head and made us wait a little while, that’s all. Besides, I’m very happy with the way you’ve handled things. If you hadn’t left, my mother would have married us off in Buenos Aires, and I would have been uncomfortable. I don’t really understand what happened when we were at city hall. I said to myself: this is for life, but I’m not sure I’ll make her happy. Then I thought, since she wants to go, let her go; she’s the one who’ll take responsibility for the break, and that’s for the best right now. At the time I had some very complicated matters to settle at the office with the Argentine airmail service. I was signing checks without knowing what they were paying for and my sweet mother was taking her time in coming across the Atlantic. Then you left me, and I was glad. Yes, I was glad, because you proved to me that you