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You cried, you held me in your arms and said, “I can't take it any more. I'm holding on only
for you.”
In the hospital, Françoise discovered her husband on his deathbed:
I found you alone in a vast, cold, repellent room. I had been authorized only a one-hour vis-
it. How could the medical corps . . . so lack common humanity as to tear one of us away
from the other, two beings who were never meant to be separated?
You did not seem to be conscious. You lay there inert. Did you smell my scent? Your lips
were slack and loose, as if in a smile. Your pupils were half open, but your sight was
gone—it had already left us.
I was petrified.
You were so cold, your body no longer breathed, but in that extreme moment, by a reflex
of will, you raised your arm to pass your hand through my hair. From the light touch of
your fingers, I understood that you wanted me to bring my face near to yours and embrace
you. That stroke of your hand in contact with my skin, that kiss, that gesture—I keep that
as your final gift.
Rébuffat died on June 1, 1985. In the months that followed, Françoise was haunted
not so much by his absence as by a feeling that he was still there: “I write to you, as
though you were simply away on a voyage. I continue to wait for you.” And yet, “The
monotony of my days grows heavier and heavier.” Still, “In the darkness, our compli-
city goes on. There is no decision that I make without asking you about it. . . . Love
has its excuses, it ought to be unconditional, and sometimes it persists only through
an absence of logic.
“In return, I sense that wherever you are, you hear me and pardon me.”
Rébuffat lies buried on a hill near the side of the old Chamonix cemetery, surroun-
ded by other guides. For his epitaph, Françoise chose an epigram from Rébuffat's most
poetic book, Les Horizons Gagnés, that defines the essence of mountaineering: “Con-
duire son corps là où un jour ses yeux ont regardé”—“To transport one's body to the
place where once the eyes first gazed.”
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