Daniel LeBlanc—Claude Levitte

Daniel LeBlanc—Claude Levitte is an antagonistic relationship defined by denunciation: a local informant’s tip led to Daniel’s arrest in January 1941. The novel first presents the possibility of informers through wary talk of surveillance and unequal privileges, then later identifies Claude Levitte by name, linking suspicion in occupied Saint-Malo to the machinery that removed Daniel from his family.

Suspicion and Unequal Treatment

In an exchange about the danger of having women gathered in a house, one speaker warns that people are watching and names the perfumer as a source of concern. The other dismisses Claude as too self-absorbed to matter. That confidence is challenged: Claude is no longer a child, and his family receives more meat, electricity, and butter than others. The speaker reads these advantages as prizes that someone must win, and asks for help; the reply is a reluctance to make trouble. The scene establishes a climate in which surveillance, material privilege, and possible collaboration are difficult to separate, without yet proving who has informed on whom.

The Tip and Daniel’s Arrest

The later account supplies the decisive identification. A report describes Daniel as accused of conspiracy involving a château in Brittany and arrested in January 1941 after a local person’s tip. Investigators had found drawings and skeleton keys, and Daniel had also been photographed taking measurements in Saint-Malo. When asked to identify the informer, the report names a Malouin, Claude Levitte. The information makes Claude’s role specific: he is not merely suspected of benefiting from occupation but is named as the source whose tip preceded Daniel’s arrest.

What the Relationship Leaves Uncertain

The available account does not explain what Claude knew, what prompted his tip, or whether the Levitte family’s preferential access to food and electricity was a direct reward for informing. The earlier conversation invites that suspicion through its language of prizes, but does not establish an exchange. Nor can the report determine Daniel’s eventual destination: when asked whether he was sent to a camp, the informant says that he has been unable to find out and that the system is elaborate. The relationship is therefore defined most firmly by the consequence of Claude’s act, while motive and the full fate of Daniel remain obscured.