The Stolen Life of Colette Marceau

Colette steals to help Le Paon’s network and feels proud that she’s fighting against the occupiers. In September 1945, her Uncle Leo takes her home to England with him. He hopes she’ll continue their family tradition. While Frédéric supports the value of tradition, he reminds Colette “that there is a difference between a life that honors the past and a life dictated by it” (275). Colette makes one last effort to locate her father and realizes she’s an orphan. Then she looks in the courtyard with the garden and finds the brick where she exchanged notes with Tristan. Her last letter to him is gone. She feels the full impact of all she has lost, and knows that Paris will never again be her home.

Colette marvels at how Paris has changed. She supports Daniel through the meeting with André Besner, and Daniel is moved to see a note in his father’s handwriting expressing his hope that Daniel and Ruth will pass on the bracelets as they see fit. Colette understands “that sense of foundational loss, of having not only your loved ones stolen from you, but also all evidence that they’d ever existed in the first place” (280). Daniel asks that the bracelets go to Colette.