Excerpt from Renoir's Dancer by Catherine Hewitt, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

So it was that despite the early morning chill and the bleakness of a season made even more melancholy by the still recent loss of her father, the young girl had every reason to feel full of hope and expectation that February morning. It was no ordinary Tuesday; that day, she was to be married to one of the most eligible young men in the village.

Léger Coulaud was a man many a girl would be proud to call her husband. A local lad from a respectable family, he plied one of the most highly prized trades in the town: he was a blacksmith. In an agricultural town like Bessines, lu faure (as he was known in the local dialect), commanded universal respect. Not only did he repair the shoes of both horse and rider; he fixed broken machinery, mended farm equipment and could turn his hand to any task where welding was required. It was a valuable skill – a potentially lucrative skill. Without lu faure, the very heart of the town would stop beating.

For Madeleine, that mattered. Urgent though securing a match might have been, her family were not the kind of people to accept any man for their latest marriageable member.

While they were not rich, Mathieu-Alexandre Valadon and Marie Dony were a good, honest couple with estimable ancestral heritage. Mathieu-Alexandre's father was a military man, and his grandfather had enjoyed the honour of being one of the town's first municipal officers. Marie Dony's family tree boasted all manner of figures considered 'notable' in rural society, such as master masons, millers and notaires. Though they were by no means bourgeois, the Valadons came from good stock.

Nor would Madeleine make an undesirable wife. She had high cheekbones, and though she was plain and her face rather angular, and she was hardly the prettiest girl in Bessines, her features were at least even. Furthermore, she could read and write, and being trained as a linen maid, she could boast a skill. Etiquette manuals stipulated that linen maids should be quick, strong, neat and above all, keen to please – attributes which rendered a woman equally appealing as a spouse.

However, in Léger Coulaud, Madeleine could feel confident that she would be taking a husband whom her family considered worthy. Strength and physical stamina were a professional requisite in Léger's trade, important considerations when selecting a spouse on whose income a female would come to depend; no right-minded young girl wanted a husband who was incapable of work. And besides his profession, Léger too benefited from favourable family connections; the names of two Coulauds appeared on the list of teachers approved by the local council in the 19th century. One of them was also called Léger, a name passed down the male line in the Coulaud family, so undoubtedly a relative. To possess even the rudiments of education was considered impressive at the time, particularly in a rural community like Bessines. 'Public instruction,' wrote the new sous-préfet or sub-prefect to the mayor in 1816, 'wisely directed, is the seed of social virtues; the sowing of pure morality, the tie that binds together all citizens, the guarantee of happiness and the glory of nations.' Educated men and their associates were looked on with respect. And as if those attributes did not suffice, Léger shared his name with the town's patron saint and was born in the nearby hillside commune of Le Mas Barbu, where Madeleine's family hailed from. Those facts alone surely boded well. What did it matter if the young girl's fiancé was thirteen years her senior, and the civil ceremony, the legally binding part of the marriage contract, was to be performed on the 13th of the month? Superstition was surely immaterial when set against such auspicious circumstances. Besides, the presence of a white hen throughout the proceedings and a pinch of salt in the pocket, both traditional amulets said to bring marital harmony, would allay the concerns of the most paranoid of wedding guests. The match was decided.

Renoir's DancerRenoir's Dancer by Catherine Hewitt. Copyright © 2018 by the author and reprinted by permission of St Martin's Press.