Serge Panine

CROWNED BY THE FRENCH ACADEMY

Madame Desvarennes has built her great business in the old mansion on Rue Saint Dominique -- first a bakery, then a flour-milling empire that has made her among the most wealthy and respected business owners in Paris. Everything she has aimed for in life, she has achieved, after having arrived into the world without the least advantage.

Yet as she sits at Christmas beside the fire with her husband, she feels desolate and lonely -- for an emptiness has been growing in her . . . and now she sees a vision: a child, crawling near the warmth of the flames!

Fate brings her an orphaned child, Jeanne -- and soon thereafter, the wealthy couple are surprised at last by the arrival of their own baby -- another girl, whom they name Michelins. Time passes for the mother and two daughters . . . and into their lives enters a man whose ways will affect all three -- although whether through goodness or villainy, none can agree!

A bestseller of nineteenth-century France, Serge Panine launched the career of novelist Georges Ohnet (1848-1918).