Bon alors ça c'est en anglais. Je ne suis pas bilingue (mais j'y travaille) alors je suis désolée pour les fautes si jamais vous en trouvez. (je sais, j'en fais aussi en français.)

    He was living in an old town. An old man in an old town. The town was old, but most of its buildings were not. His house was not old, he had built it with his own hands, as soon as he had had enough money to do so. He had rebuilt a great part of the town too, after the war. He was part of the young men who survived it. When he came back from the STO—the obligation for the young French men to go work in Germany during the second world war—he was poor, thin and tired. But he was young and free and he could work. He married a French girl of his age and began to rebuilt the town. The work was hard, ill-paid and almost infinite. But piece after piece, from stone to concrete the town was standing again. After that a job was easy to find. After two years in building everything, his way was clear: he became a mason. Easy to find, hard to keep, hard to live with. Most of the time he came home just to fall asleep in a his plate. What a family life.
    At the beginning his plate was not always full, but it lasted only a few years. His wife finally found a job and his life improved. She gave birth to their first son, then the second, then the third and then a daughter: the last one. He was fond of his children, even if he did not always show it. His eldest was his favourite, of course: he was his Son, his heir, even if he had no property to inherit, just a worker's name. But he was also very fond of the last one, the small girl of the family.
    His children, as all children, grew and changed and became independent. First in mind, then in means.
    His oldest son went to university. He was so proud of him. So proud that his son, coming from the working class, could go so far. His second son reached also the university, but he was only the second one. Even if his father was as proud as for the first, he was not the oldest.
    Life was going on, his children grew and most of them left the house. Only the two youngest were still living in. The spirit which maintained the peace in the family vanished. Of course he still loved his children. But his wife could not bear him anymore. The rows were hard and noisy but never violent. He never could have hit someone in such circumstances.
    And then she fell ill. Cancer. He became desperate. Cancer could not be treated. She became weak, could do nothing more than eat. She was sent to the hospital. To improve end of life, he said to his children. They could do nothing more than watch her die. What she did, finally. She was buried in the local crowded cemetery. A tomb among a thousand. He flourished it each year, at All Saints.
    Life went on. Everyone became fully independent from each other. The children built their own lives, and he learnt again to live on his own. He cooked, he washed, he sewed. A perfect house-man.
    Then, a long long time after that, when he began to be normal again, his eyes fell on someone else.