“May I call you My Lady?” »

Forgive me, My Lady – may I call you My Lady as we call you Our Lady? – , if I cannot completely add my voice to the chorus of those – how I envy them! – who joyfully celebrate your resurrection. I would like to applaud this prodigy like everyone else, and give thanks, and sing your glory… But the truth is that memory is even more vivid than observation for me; the feeling, more present than the glimpse.

Also, at the risk of seeming sad to you, I continue to sense some wounds under your scars, still feel some gaps behind your new skin, still perceive a few clouds in your once again blue sky. Whatever the work and talent of all the people of art who, for five years, have worked tirelessly to care for you, to rebuild you, I find it a little difficult to forget that our generation will remain the one who will have neglected you to the point of letting you burn.

The damage is done; we fixed it – and that’s a huge relief – but we won’t erase it. And if I see you with great happiness thus remade, fresher in certain points, more luminous than you were before the catastrophe, I will never be able to envisage you again without a touch of guilt.

At best I will perhaps dare, with time, to pass near your island again without scrutinizing you too anxiously, to walk in front of your large porches feigning an indifference which signals the return to the norm. But don’t expect better…

As for those who would be tempted to speak of evil for good or of a devil carrying stones, I simply say to them: “Be silent, it will be better.”