The Beginning

I picture Marie Gervaise (or Herve, as some have recorded it) to be a tall and elegant woman, imperious in her carriage, completely in command of her household. Gervaise was her maiden name, of course, one of which she had great pride, but now her married name makes her that much prouder.

She looks, perhaps, like something Dante Gabriel Rossetti might have painted: a cloud of dark hair that falls in big waves, pale skin, luminous eyes. But Rossetti would not be born yet for more than a century, and as far as I know, there is no painting of Marie, nor of her husband Jean-Louis, or their three children.

Jean-Louis Landromon dit Langlinais exists in my mind in much the same way as his wife: an aristocratic man with sharp, fine features. He also has dark hair, is perhaps slightly more swarthy in skin tone than his wife. Together they appear as the leads in a historical romance novel, maybe.

Or not. The truth is, I know very little about these early ancestors of mine. That they lived in St.-Malo in France; that they had three children: Jean-Louis (called Louis, probably to avoid confusion with his father), Marie-Jeanne, and Angelique; that Marie remarried after the death of Jean-Louis, and her second husband brought her and his step-children to Louisiana--this is all established.

A caveat now for my readers. Some of what you read in this novel will be true, or at least based in truth. A much of it--most of it, I'll hazard--will be utterly fictitious. I do expect, though, that the whole of it will be entertaining.