The Reinvention of Love

Notre-Dame-des-Champs, tripping over the cobblestones in my rush to get to Adèle. And I think of her waiting, perfectly still, by the open window in the drawing room, listening for theslightest scuff of my shoes on the street.

    Adèle Hugo c. 1855

    I cannot help myself. I weep into my hands.
    The rocking chair stops whispering against the floor. I hearAdèle’s footsteps, then the creak of the bed frame as she sits down beside me. Her tentative hand finds mine.
    “Will you take me to the orchard again?” she says. “As you did when I was a little girl?”
    Her skin feels cool. I hold on to her hand like a drowning man.
    “Of course,” I say. “Of course.”
    I don’t know if this is possible, but I will try. I will talk to the matron on my way out, see if I can arrange this for the next time I come to visit Adèle.
    “You remember the orchard?” I ask.
    “You would sit with Maman,” says Adèle, “on the bench by the trees. Holding her hand, just like this. I would sit on the ground by your legs. And we were all very happy. The end.”
    I walk home from the asylum through the orchard in the Jardin du Luxembourg. They are changing the way they grow the fruit here. The trees are now espaliered, each one trained carefully to grow its fruit in straight lines.
    An apple tree lives roughly as long as a man. The trees that Adèle and I walked through are now nearing the end of their lives. They are twisted and gnarled, their leaves gone from the winter winds, their limbs crashed to the ground. The orchard is littered with these broken branches. The limbs of the old apple trees grow straight out, eventually becoming too heavy for the trunk to bear. They have dropped off and lie beneath the trees intact. It seems more like an amputation than a natural winnowing.
    The new trees, with their perfect controlled shapes, grow among the old, wild trees.
    The ground is cobbled with fallen fruit. But high up in one of the trees, high up in the branches, a single winter apple still clings tightly to the bough.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

    SAINTE-BEUVE died on October 13, 1869 from complications following bladder surgery. The physical condition that defined his love affair with Adèle – first identified while he was at medical school, and later written about in his diaries – helped bring about his death.
    Victor Hugo died on May 22, 1885, outliving both his sons by more than a decade. Adèle Hugo remained in the Paris asylum for over forty years, dying there, at the age of eighty-five, in 1915, the last surviving child of Victor and Adèle.
    With few exceptions the events in my novel mirror actual events. Where possible I have used the words of Sainte-Beuve, Adèle, and George Sand.
    Of the many original and secondary sources that were used in the writing of this book, I would like to especially acknowledge Harold Nicolson’s biography,
Sainte-Beuve
, and I express my gratitude to the archivists at Princeton University for allowing me access to the notes he made while at work on this book.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

    FOR THEIR BELIEF IN THIS BOOK , and their work and help to make it better, I would like to thank my agent, Clare Alexander, and my editor, Phyllis Bruce. I am more than grateful for their wisdom, acumen, and guidance – not to mention patience – during the writing of this novel.
    I would like to thank Mark Siemons at Altair Electronics for computer triage above and beyond the call.
    Martine Bresson translated the letters from George Sand to Sainte-Beuve. The translations of Sainte-Beuve’s poetry are my own.
    Professor Julie Kane generously allowed me to read her translations of Victor Hugo’s poems to his daughter, Leopoldine.
    Special thanks to Frances Hanna, who was the first reader of this novel.
    A portion of this novel first appeared in the journal
Queen’s Quarterly
in 2008.
    The title of the novel is a translation of the following quote from Rimbaud:
Il faut reinventer l’amour
.
    So much of the novel, and my life, has been made possible by the following people: Mary Louise Adams, Tama Baldwin, Megan Boler, Elizabeth Christie, Craig Dale, Carol Drake, Sue Goyette, Elizabeth Greene, Anne Hardcastle, Heather Home, Cathy Humphreys, Frances Humphreys, Michelle Jaffe, Paul Kelley, Hugh LaFave, Walter Lloyd, Susan Lord, Bruce Martin, Eleanor MacDonald, Jennie McKnight, Daintry Norman, Joanne Page, Anne Peters, Mike and Suzanne Ryan, Su Rynard,Glenn Stairs, Ray and Lori Vos.
    Before we knew he was dying, my