Chapter Thirty
L’Asile Départemental d’Aliénés de Bron
Monsieur Michel Denis
April 5th 1916
Dear Michel,
I want to be blunt in this letter – after starting with the familiarity of your first forename, it should be easier, but it isn’t. It’s much harder than I thought it would be. So many things gallop through my mind. I must try to clarify them; I don’t know if I can.
Anyway, here I go. You told me in the Argonne that you’re an only child, so I take the liberty of presuming that you don’t know what it’s like to have siblings.
I have four brothers. One of them, Angème, was a year younger than me. I’ve seen and felt the difference in the way our parents brought up the boys and me. I was chaperoned and had to live in a tightly controlled environment, like, I suppose, nearly all the gir
