« I found them there, arranged just as custom required. But I do not look at the pose—I look into their eyes. And hers, Berthe’s, is already no longer fully holding on to life. No one says a word. No one moves. Yet, in the silence of that day in 1914, a place in the family is already beginning to stand empty. »
« I looked at her twice. Once standing proudly in her youth, then again seated, already surrounded by shadows. Between those two moments, no visible years have passed—only a disease that quietly stole everything away. Berthe herself has not changed; it is life that has slowly withdrawn from her. »
« There they stand, almost alike. And yet one already belongs to the army, while the other is still waiting for the war to come and claim him. He believes he still has time—a few weeks, perhaps a few months. But war forgets no one. It simply allows some to wait before calling them in turn. »
« The photographer arranged them as though placing objects. Straight. Aligned. Motionless. Ernestine did not protest. One does not protest against the camera. Yet her husband is only a few steps away, and she cannot go to him. So she remains where she has been placed. But I know this: it was never a distance they chose. »
« At first, I looked at the little girl. Then my eyes rose to her mother. They share the same name, like a thread stretched between two lives. But that thread is already fragile.
The child sits upright, ready to grow. Her mother is still standing, yet life is quietly slipping away from her.
And I remain there, between the one whose story is just beginning and the one whose story is already drawing to its close. »
« Berthe Huret would grow up with her father, far from the Bourgeois family. She would live a happy life, marry, have children and grandchildren, and one day, many years later, she too would quietly pass away. »
A rebrousse temps généalogie 