La Marseillaise

La Marseillaise is the patriotic song that concludes the narrator’s feverish vision of returning to Nice with his mother. In that imagined homecoming, it gives a public, collective voice to the devotion and promise that sustain him through a life-threatening illness.

Appearance in the Vision

While gravely ill, the narrator imagines walking through the Buffa Market in uniform, his mother beside him, then proceeding along the Promenade des Anglais before an applauding crowd. The imagined spectators hail his mother’s achievements and raise their hats; a general singing of La Marseillaise follows. The song is not presented as part of an actual celebration, but as a moment in the scene he constructs while near death.

From Private Promise to Public Ritual

The vision brings together military honors, the acclaim of the crowd, and the narrator’s bond with his mother. He understands this imagined spectacle as a work of art and as the fulfillment of a promise to her. La Marseillaise marks the transition from their intimate connection to a collective ceremony: the crowd’s singing makes the private family story appear publicly recognized as a story of France.

Narrative Significance

The song’s place at the vision’s close links French belonging with the narrator’s struggle to survive. After the imagined procession, he rejects the idea of surrendering the scene merely because doctors expect him to die; he declares that he would rather live. La Marseillaise thus belongs to a patriotic image that is at once theatrical and emotionally consequential: it helps him frame survival as the means of keeping his promise and completing the imagined masterpiece.