Suite Francaise

The middle-class Catholic Péricands are fairly wealthy and potentially stand to receive any inheritance the elder Monsieur Péricand does not bequeath to the orphanage of the Penitent Children of the 16th Arrondissement. Madame Charlotte Péricand runs the household, managing her five children’s education, her husband’s career as curator of one of the national museums, and the elder Monsieur Péricand’s care. In wartime, she feels that it is her duty to echo the newscasters and keep up morale.

The Péricands consider that they might need to evacuate their home, as they accept that Paris might be invaded and destroyed by the Germans. The second son, Hubert, is a boy scout and has notions that he and his friends could form a volunteer army that would defend France; however, he bursts into tears at the thought that France could lose the war.

Gabriel Corte, a renowned writer, is working on his Parisian terrace while his main mistress, Florence, picks up the papers around him. Gabriel is the object of his peers’ envy for his wealth. He finds the war an irritation, as it destroys his writerly routines. When a call from the presidential office come in, warning Gabriel’s household to leave because the Germans have crossed the Seine, it is Florence who picks up. While she tells the servants to pack the valuables from the house, she thinks that it is better to keep Gabriel in the dark until the next morning, so as not to alarm him.

The Péricands’ eldest son, Philippe, has suffered from tuberculosis, and the weakness in his lungs makes him exempt from military duty. He is a priest with a parish in Auvergne. He visits the asylum of the Penitent Children of the 16th Arrondissement and struggles to make conversation with the little inmates, most of whom are orphans. Meanwhile, the director thanks Philippe for evacuating the children to safety.

Philippe cannot help disliking the orphans, despite his best intentions. He considers them “children of Satan” who have no use for his religion, even though they have been confirmed and gone through Holy Communion (23). Nevertheless, he gives a speech inviting them to religious surrender.

The Michauds are a married couple employed by the same bank and still very much in love. Their boss, Monsieur Corbin, has a dancer mistress called Arlette Corail. Madame Michaud, who works as a secretary, overhears Arlette in a fury because Monsieur Corbin will not help her escape the city in his wife’s car.

Monsieur Corbin then announces that they are leaving for the Tours branch of the bank at eight a.m. the next morning. He is organizing an evacuation and says that he will take the Michauds in his car. The Michauds think of their son, Jean-Marie, who is at the front and wrote to them a week earlier. They fear for his life but are grateful that they have each other.

The Péricands aim to stuff a van with themselves, their heirlooms, and their cat. Hubert is to follow on his bicycle. Preparations have been slow, because the servants have been packing in their customary careful way, as “they were living two different moments, you might say, half in the present and half deep in the past, as if what was happening could only seep into a small part of their consciousnesses” (30). Monsieur Péricand is staying behind.

Charles Langelet is alone wrapping up his precious porcelain, as his servants have already fled the city. The only things he truly loves are his objects and his whimsically decorated apartment. Although Langelet claims that at 60 he is not afraid of death, he is leaving for a house he owns in Ciboure, near the Spanish border, and will then try to escape to Lisbon, Portugal, because he cannot stand the chaos in Paris. He feels that he is too delicate for the brutishness of the current time.

The Michauds wake up at five to clean their apartment on the day they think they will be leaving with Monsieur Corbin. When they arrive at the bank and approach Corbin’s car, they see that their seats have been occupied by Arlette with her dog and her luggage. Although Corbin and Arlette argue, he allows her to take the Michauds’ seats, advising that they should take the train to Tours instead. He then insults Michaud, saying that he needs to be as dynamic as his wife if he wants to keep his job. They go home and have lunch, but figure that they must get to Tours if they want to keep their jobs. They have no choice but to head out of Paris on foot.

Gabriel and Florence sleep in their car the night of June 11, as Gabriel has rejected the little hotel rooms offered to them for being below standard. The manager insists he has nothing else and attempts to remind Gabriel of the streams of refugees.

Earlier, when Gabriel saw armored cars parked in the town square, he tried to deny that he was afraid. The town of Orleans is packed with refugees, and as German planes fly over, people feel like dehumanized targets. Gabriel looks down on the other refugees for being of a lower social class than he.

When the Péricands’ car breaks down, they must temporarily stay with relatives on the road. However, they are eager to move on, as “panic was intensifying, spreading like wildfire from one city to another” (45).

Once their car is repaired, they stop in a small town, which is filled with exhausted refugees. Madame Péricand takes pity on the refugees, even as she looks down on them for being poor. She shares her treats with a little boy from a good family. However, when she goes to the grocery store, she is surprised to find it completely empty. She feels that she and her children are “alone in a hostile world” (49).

The Michauds are escaping Paris on foot, accompanied by other refugees. Jeanne Michaud holds children’s hands, while Maurice Michaud offers to carry bags. They duck close to the ground whenever they see an explosion and grow accustomed to seeing fatalities.

Whenever they glimpse French soldiers, Jeanne thinks she sees Jean-Marie among them. Both she and her husband despair of ever making it to Tours and put their future in God’s hands.

The Michauds are picked up by a military truck and told that they will be taken to a railway line that goes to Tours. When they get there, Italian and German planes are flying above, and one fires. Jeanne and her husband try to dig people out of the rubble. As the wounded are transferred into a truck that has been vacated by a priest and the orphans he is looking after, Jeanne wonders whether Jean-Marie is on one of the stretchers. Her husband guides her to the platform where the Tours train awaits them.

Wounded two days before, Jean-Marie has remained behind in Bussy, where the residents take care of him and other French soldiers who cannot continue with their regiment.

Feverish, he wakes up to find himself at the bedside of a woman who hopes that her beloved absent man is being as well cared for as Jean-Marie. The woman’s adopted daughter brings him cherries, and although he cannot eat them, he feels grateful for the cool sensation against his cheek.

Gabriel and Florence are driving toward Bordeaux, with Gabriel implying that he wants to leave France altogether. Florence suddenly finds that Gabriel seems “a weak and despicable creature” to her, as opposed to her lover and protector (61). Gabriel continues to complain about the vulgarity of the common refugees with whom they are traveling. He is startled to find that one of the women who disgusts him is trying to make conversation.

Hungry, Gabriel starts to think of all the good food he has eaten in his life. When they arrive in Tours, a well-dressed woman tells him and Florence that there is nothing to eat. Gabriel is determined to find the few people who have hoarded food and use his reputation to obtain it. He slips some money into a man’s hand. The man gives them a basket, but a shadowy figure seizes it from them.

A working-class woman is indignant that her brother, the innkeeper Jules, has stolen food. As a servant and countrywoman, she hates elite city people and feels that her heart has hardened now that she must work in the factory in her husband’s place. Another woman, Hortense, comments that Gabriel, the man Jules stole from, looks down on them and would have been glad to see them starve to death.

When the rumor that the Germans have reached Paris spreads to their group, Hortense feels so wounded by the news that she says that she would rather have her husband dead than have such humiliating news be true.

The Péricands end up lodging in a room in a house with two elderly spinsters. Hubert rages at the news that the Germans have taken Paris and vows to go and fight. He implores his mother to let him go, but she says that he is young and that his duty is to preserve his life. He and a blond-haired boy called René vow to go anyway. Hubert idolizes René, though he is unconsciously trying to replace his brother Philippe, who left to be a priest. He escapes home and waits for René, who never comes. He hears some voices speaking German and eventually finds a troupe of French soldiers to join.