L'abbé Jules

The story opens with a young narrator recalling a household where conversation is scarce. His parents, though fond of each other, speak only when necessity forces them—about births, surgeries, and the occasional village gossip. They enforce a rigid code that a well‑behaved child should speak only to eat, recite lessons, or pray. This quiet, disciplined world leaves the boy to observe more than to participate.

His father, a surgeon, carries his tools home like relics, polishing steel blades and arranging forceps with a ritualistic care. The boy watches the gleaming instruments and hears his father's clinical commentary on pregnancies, tumours, and the hidden horrors of the operating room. These vivid, almost grotesque details turn his childhood fantasies of birds and fairies into nightmarish visions of blood and cut tissue. As the narrative unfolds, the contrast between the domestic calm and the surgeon’s macabre world sharpens the young narrator’s uneasy curiosity.