"Sweet "Toulouse

--Toulouse
By Diane Bedrin

Now the Piece de Resistance!! The reason we came to Toulouse! We were so lucky tonight to have dinner with our dear cousin, Denise Epstein. She is the daughter of the wonderful and talented author, Irene Nemirovsky.
Jaime was overwhelmed with emotion to meet her and finally get to see in person the woman she has been emailing with these past months.

Denise is a spry, active woman who has just completed her own novel, Survive and Live. It will be published this fall. She wrote it for her grandchildren and we look forward to reading it, too. It is the story of her experience during and after World War II.
Denise also told us that she will be visiting the US in September for an exhibit about Irene Nemirovsky at the Jewish Museum at Battery Park.

We had such a lovely dinner with Denise, she told us what to order and then she ordered a special dessert for us that was fit for 10 people!

We were all talking non-stop, Jaime in French and Denise in French and English and then Jaime translated everything. A woman at the next table was listening in and when she heard who Denise was she stood up and told Denise that she read Irene's book, that she had all of her friends reading it and she asked to take a photo of Denise. It was an amazing moment. Denise doesn't love the celebrity feeling and she shies away from it. Of course her new book will bring her much fame. We walked back during a drizzle. It was raining cats and dogs during dinner. Tomorrow we will go to her home and meet her daughter, Irene, and see all of her photographs, etc. We can't wait! We wish we could see her entire family but that won't be possible. She has had contact with my grandfather's family in Russia and Germany, too. Hopefully the sun will be shining and we can bike and then visit with Denise tomorrow. Parts of her life has been so sad, "triste," we were awed when she said au revoir to us tonight she told us that we had made her so happy to have come this far to visit with her.
What a lovely woman she is and how fortunate we are to have met her.
What an incredible journey!