The discovery and disclosure of Sabine de Kercoz's journal turns a scholarly exchange into a new route into Christabel LaMotte’s past. Found by Leonora Stern and copied for Maud Bailey, the journal covers almost all of LaMotte’s visit to Brittany in autumn 1859. Its arrival offers an intimate record where the researchers had lacked one, while the narrative withholds its implications until Maud and Roland Michell have read it.

Discovery and Provenance

Leonora tells Maud that, after writing to Professor Stern, she has found a journal intime kept by Sabine de Kercoz. It covers almost all of LaMotte’s visit in autumn 1859, making it a substantial record of a period central to the researchers’ investigation. Leonora supposes Sabine was imitating George Sand by keeping a journal and therefore wrote in French rather than in Breton, which might have seemed more natural to her. The language thus carries a clue to Sabine’s literary model as well as to the document’s form.

Disclosure and Scholarly Exchange

Maud says she would very much like to see the journal. Leonora reveals that she has already made a photocopy, both so Maud can show it to Professor Stern and as a gesture of admiration for Maud’s work on Melusina. She also presents the copy as compensation for her absence and the closure of the archive. Her appeal to photocopying as a democratic invention leads into an explicit claim for sharing information as a feminist principle of cooperation: access to the document is offered not as a private scholarly advantage but as a resource to circulate.

Reading and Narrative Consequence

Leonora warns Maud that she will be surprised by the journal’s contents and hopes they can discuss the implications after Maud has read it, declining to spoil the discovery in advance. Maud responds with confused surprise and gratitude. Although she knows Leonora’s reaction will matter, curiosity and the appetite for the story outweigh that immediate concern. The following day, Maud and Roland drive through Brittany to Finistère; over the next three days at a hotel in Fouesnant, they read Sabine’s journal. The narration postpones what they think and presents the journal’s contents afterward, making the newly recovered document both evidence within the investigation and a hinge in the novel’s delayed disclosure of LaMotte’s history.