THE ALPHONSE COURRIER AFFAIR

Seething beneath the veneer of the humdrum daily round, detectable often in nothing more than a glance, a gesture, is a high charge of passion that displays Morazzoni's irresistible facility for creating unstoppable page-turners. In a village in the Auvergne a hundred years ago Alphonse Courrier set up shop as an ironmonger and prospered sufficiently to maintain a mistress, Adele, a girl too plain to merit a second glance, and a wife, the pretty Agnes. The wife engages a maid, Germaine, to come in and scrub the floor. Germaine takes a shine to Alphonse. With time the ironmonger is blessed with two boys, and loses his elderly mother. All goes like clockwork in this honourable menage until Alphonse's companion the local vet discovers in himself an unarguable attraction for Madame Courrier, and the lady is sufficiently bored to reciprocate. The mistress Germaine diees in a fire, which might have been arson; at all events the flames were clearly fanned by the virulent village gossips. In a village where nothing happens, what goes on beneath the surface to disrupt the calm is everyone's business.