Agnès leaves her native Piedmont, her village, and the cities, including Turin, where she and her husband aim to carve out a place for themselves in this late 19th-century society, where one is either poor or rich. To succeed, courage, hard work, and determination are required. She lacks none of these, and throughout this novel, she will prove it to us.
We are about ten years after the annexation of Nice to France, Italy is unified, and Turin, then Florence, and finally Rome successively become the capital of the young kingdom. In Turin, Agnès learns about ‘life’ with a friend with whom she shares secrets. Her husband is a coachman, Eligio has achieved his ambition, but it is not that of his wife. Thus, Agnès will arrive in Nice, determined to climb this social ladder, to become somebody.
This is the story of this woman and, through her, of those Piedmontese who came to Nice to work and establish themselves. We find ourselves in the working-class neighborhoods of the city, in this old Nice with the scents of aromatic herbs and a language that is neither French, nor Italian, nor even Piedmontese.
Alfred Hart sometimes looks through the keyhole, inquisitive, voyeur? Not at all, but like a watercolorist, he describes the everyday scenes. A refreshing novel whose reading will teach us about Nice at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, a whole story from which the most observant readers, after reading this work, will be able to trace the always visible footsteps of Agnès through the narrow streets of old Nice.
