Book of the duchess: an encounter in Vannes

Number 6: Michael, walking the streets of Vannes, encounters a woman, whom he does not guess to be the duchess. She - knowing the past history of the family - recognises him

The plot episode 5 (summarised from the text of Lorna’s novel)

Michael and Raoul spent the night at the house of a trusted cloth merchant of liberal tendencies.

In Vannes the next day Michael saw Duchess Jacqueline for the first time. He considered her very beautiful and could not help smiling at her. Jacqueline, equally charmed by the tall young man with red hair, asked her marshal Guillot who he might be.

Guillot recognised Michael immediately, seeing in his face that of his murdered half brother. He could not hide his horror and dismay.

Jacqueline noticed Guillot’s dark look and asked her friend Marguérite the same question that she had posed to Guillot, adding ‘Who is there in the duchy, Grete, that has red hair and Guillot would have reason to fear?’ Marguérite answered: ‘A Saint Étienne’.

Jacqueline found this astonishing. For her whole life up until this day she had believed that the entire Saint Étienne line had died out when she was a tiny girl.

Lorna’s remarks

This is a bad illustration. Michael is extraordinarily badly drawn, and the painting of the whole picture is messy.

Some care seems to have been taken with the horses, but the details of the costume are most inaccurate, and the subordinate figures are woefully ill-conceived.

Some attention seems to have been paid to the folds of the banners, and a little to the drapery on the balcony, but on the whole it is another example of the attempt to get an effect without the necessary labour of drawing and painting in the details.