First Part: 6.75

Michel summons some of his friends to his serene place in Greece seemingly to just tell them his life story, beginning with his arranged marriage to Marceline following his father's death and their prolonged honeymoon across North Africa during which Michel is plagued by sickness and finds solace only in ingratiating himself with the young boys (tbd if he's nefarious/predatory, or just colonially entertained).

Michel is kind of annoying:

My erudition, which was aroused at every step, became an encumbrance and hampered my joy.

He convalesces and throws himself into reading and learning while traveling about only to eventually realize that he has been neglecting Marceline.

Second Part: 7

Michel working on lectures and Marceline pregnant. Living on her father, Brocage's, farm. Her brother Charles comes to visit and knows everything about farming. They shut down the farms for the winter and move back to Paris from whence they came.

In our very first conversations I found myself forced to impersonate a false character, to resemble the man they imagined I still was; and for convenience’s sake, I pretended to have the thoughts and tastes with which they credited me. One cannot both be sincere and seem so.

re-encounters an old acquaintence: Ménalque, who had visited Briskar (one of Michel and Marceline's honeymoon stops where he befriended the children), and Ménalque begins an inquisition of the Michel's decline as a respected academic following his marriage, sickness, and affinity for solitary time + children:

“First of all, that you had been ill.”

“But there’s nothing in that to... “Oh, yes! That in itself is very important. Then I was told you liked going out alone, without a book (that’s what started me wondering), or, when you were not alone, you preferred the company of children to that of your wife. . . . Don’t blush like that, or I shan’t go on.”

Confronts Michel about how he let Moktir steal his wife's scissors one day and said nothing. Ménalque says that he, Michel, has lost a vital 'moral sense'.

Novel detestation of people of principle:

“Yes,” answered Ménalque, laughing, “there is nothing more detestable in the world. It is impossible to expect any sort of sincerity from them; for they never do anything but what their principles have decreed they should do; or if they do, they think they have done wrong.

Marceline becomes very sick during the pregnancy.

It is madness to envy other people’s happiness; one would not know what to do with it. Happiness won't come to one readymade; it has to be made to measure.

bars. this book moving like Elden Ring the way everyone's name start wit 'M'.

Marceline miscarries and Michel stays by her bedside for weeks

Refuses to pray for Marceline, recalling how he "got well on his own," to which she reminds him that she prayed over him endlessly.

Disease had taken hold of Marceline, never again to leave her; it had marked her, stained her. Henceforth she was a thing that had been spoiled.

broooOOOOO

Returning to the farm for the season, he does not get along with Marceline's father Bocage, but does befriend his other son, Alcide who teaches him how to trap. Michel gets caught up in an illicit trapping ring and Bocage –who had been previously reprimanded for firing a farm hand without Michel's authorization– finds him in a drunken stupor, beats him, then requests Michel's permission to dismiss him, putting Michel in the tough spot of having to fire someone who is privy/involved in his trappings.

Third Part: 7.5

Returning to Paris again from the farm(s) in Normandy, they immediately set out for another sort of honeymoon to the Swiss Alps and Marceline falls deathly ill (tuberculosis) again.

Michel does grab and smooch a random Sicilian boy while they're in Naples. Unclear of paedo or if just a French/pan-European moment. They make their way to Tunis, then to Biskra where Michel is reacquainted with all the little Arab boys he befriended. Moktir has just gotten out of prison (probably for stealing) and Michel insists that he join them to Touggourt (which will be difficult because marceline is still very sick). Michel leaves their hotel in Touggourt to find a doctor as Marceline is very sick by this point, and finds instead Moktir who takes him back to his mistress's quarters where Michel lets himself "go to her as one lets oneself sink into sleep..."

When he returns to Marceline, she is not well:

no cry of agony could be more appalling than her silence.

"Epilogue": 7

The friends visiting Michel kind of sit around shocked, not knowing what to make of the story or pinpoint precisely at which point they were to condemn him. He summarizes how he's been passing the ten in the 3 months since then, which have seemed like a decade, with a boy and his sister.

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