Le Beretta de Jean Farel

Jean Farel’s Beretta is the firearm at the center of his aborted attempt to kill Françoise Merle and then himself. Retrieved from a concealed safe, it brings his wish to die with Françoise into immediate reach; a barking dog and a message from his daughter interrupt the act, and Jean puts the weapon away. The gun’s decisive role is not simply as an instrument of violence: its presence turns a private intention into a choice that can still be stopped.

Origin and Concealment

A few days after Jean was attacked in the street, his brother Léo Farel bought him the Beretta. Jean later kept it in a safe fitted inside a wardrobe, an enclosure he had arranged to conceal Françoise’s valuables. The weapon thus enters the final scene as something already available but hidden among objects associated with protecting her possessions.

The Attempt

After bathing and putting Françoise to bed, Jean lies beside her as she falls asleep. He has promised to help her die if her physical and mental decline becomes unbearable, but he has never contacted the Swiss organization whose details she gave him after her diagnosis. Now, overcome by grief and wanting to die with her, he opens the safe, takes out the Beretta, and aims at her chest.

Claude’s sudden entrance stops the sequence before Jean fires. Jean turns the gun on himself, placing its barrel in his mouth and then pushing it down his throat as he prepares to pull the trigger. The weapon makes the contemplated deaths physically imminent; the scene remains poised at the point between intention and action.

Interruption and Consequence

Jean’s phone vibrates. He lowers the Beretta and checks the messages: one asks for a quick response from the new director of his television channel; another, from Quitterie, says that his daughter is asking for him. Hearing the child’s babbling and her repeated call of “Papa, Papa,” Jean feels himself return to life. The messages recall both his work and his family, but it is the sound of his daughter that the narrative directly connects to this change.

Claude then leaps onto the bed and lies across Françoise, making high, grief-like cries. Jean puts the Beretta back in the safe, kisses Françoise as she sleeps, and leaves. He takes a taxi because he wants to be there when his son is released from prison. The gun remains behind, while the ending turns toward the living claims Jean has chosen to answer.

Narrative Significance

The Beretta links two earlier facts—the street attack and Léo’s gift—to Jean’s final crisis. In the climactic scene it is both a means of intended killing and an object that can be returned to concealment when the act is interrupted. Its handling marks the reversal: Jean retrieves it, aims it, brings it to his own mouth, lowers it, and finally locks it away. The change is concrete and limited: the weapon is not destroyed, and Françoise remains asleep, but Jean abandons the attempt and departs for his son.