Sentimental Destinies

From the start, Jean Barnery, uninterested in the family pottery business, is ordained as a pastor. He marries Nathalie Barnery, a wife not well suited to the role, and together they have a daughter, Aline. When Nathalie’s flirtations with another man provoke whispers, he sends her and their daughter away with an allowance. Yet public opinion—especially the idea that a pastor should be morally untarnished—pushes him to bring them back to the family home. Then he encounters Pauline Pommerel and loses his heart to her. He divorces Nathalie, gives up his calling, marries Pauline, and they move to a rural chalet in Switzerland, where they have a son they name Max. The trio lives simply on income from Jean’s shares and find happiness together, but Jean’s status as a divorced, unemployed former pastor leaves him despised in a conservative community.

The Barnery business is faltering, and none of the next generation has the clout to run it. When Jean is asked to step in, he agrees to become managing director, with a mandate to modernize. Pauline accepts that top-level leadership is challenging and that running a family business is even tougher, but she stands by him. When World War I breaks out in 1914, Jean refuses to seek exemption despite tuberculosis and serves at the front, while Pauline tends to wounded soldiers. After the war, he strives to raise quality and efficiency at the factory and to broaden sales in the United States, yet profits remain hard to come by and labor relations grow tense. Meanwhile, Max seems poised to take part in the business, but Aline veers off course, taking up smoking, drinking, dancing, and late nights. Later, she makes a decisive turn and is ordained as a Protestant deaconess.

The 1929 slump compounds the family’s troubles. As an American visitor tours the works, Jean suffers a fall and spends his final years bedridden, ultimately dying. In his last moments, he confesses that much of his striving was in vain, and that the one true thing was his love for Pauline.

Last Updated: October 09, 2025 at 16:38