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‘Three coffees, and bring them in cups,’ said Pierre.

‘You’re pig-headed,’ said Gerbert. ‘The other day, with Vuillemin, we measured it out; the glasses hold exactly the same amount.’

‘After a meal, coffee should be drunk from a cup,’ said Pierre with finality.

‘He maintains that the taste is different,’ said Françoise.

‘He’s a dangerous dreamer!’ said Gerbert. He thought for a minute. ‘Strictly speaking, we might agree that it cools less rapidly in cups.’

‘Why does it cool less rapidly?’ said Françoise.

‘Surface of evaporation is reduced,’ said Pierre sententiously.

‘Now you’re well off the rails,’ said Gerbert. ‘What happens is that china retains the heat better.’

They were always full of fun when they debated a physical phenomenon. It was usually something they had made up on the spur of the moment.

‘It cools all the same,’ said Françoise.

‘Do you hear what she says?’ said Pierre.

Gerbert put a finger to his lips with mock discretion; Pierre nodded his head knowingly: this was the usual mimicry to express their impertinent complicity, but today, there was no conviction in this ritual. The luncheon had dragged out cheerlessly; Gerbert seemed spiritless, they had discussed the Italian demands at great length: it was unusual for their conversation to be swamped in such generalities.

‘Did you read Soudet’s criticism this morning?’ said Françoise.

‘He’s got a nerve. He asserts that to translate a text word for word is to falsify it.’

‘Those old drivellers!’ said Gerbert. ‘They won’t dare admit that Shakespeare bores them stiff.’

‘That’s nothing, we’ve got vocal criticism on our side,’ said Françoise, ‘that’s the most important thing.’

‘Five curtain calls last night, I counted them,’ said Gerbert.

‘I’m delighted,’ said Françoise. ‘I felt sure we could put it across without making the slightest compromise.’ She turned gaily to Pierre. ‘It’s quite obvious now that you’re not merely a theorist, an ivory tower experimenter, a coterie aesthete. The porter at the hotel told me he cried when you were assassinated.’

‘I’ve always thought he was a poet,’ said Pierre. He smiled, as if somewhat embarrassed, and Françoise’s enthusiasm subsided. Four days earlier, when they had left the theatre at the close of the dress rehearsal, Pierre had been feverishly happy and they had spent an intoxicating night with Xavière! But the very next day, this feeling of triumph had left him. That was just like him: he would have been devastated by a failure, but success never seemed to him to be any more than an insignificant step forward towards still more difficult tasks that he immediately set himself. He never fell into the weakness of vanity, but neither did he experience the serene joy of work well done. He looked at Gerbert questioningly.

‘What is the Péclard clique saying?’

‘That you’re right off the mark,’ said Gerbert. ‘You know they’re all for the return to the natural and all that tripe. All the same, they would like to know just what you’ve got up your sleeve.’

Françoise was quite sure she was not mistaken, there was a certain restraint in Gerbert’s cordiality.

‘They’ll be on the look-out next year when you produce your own play,’ said Françoise. She added gaily: ‘Now, after the success of Julius Caesar, we can count on the support of the public. It’s grand to think about.’

‘It would be a good thing if you were to publish your book at the same time,’ said Gerbert.

‘You’ll no longer be just a sensation, you’ll be really famous,’ said Françoise.

A little smile played on Pierre’s lips.

‘If the brutes don’t gobble us up,’ he said.

The words fell on Françoise like a cold douche.

‘Do you think we’ll fight for Djibouti?’

Pierre shrugged his shoulders.

‘I think we were a little hasty in our rejoicings at the time of Munich. A great many things can happen between now and next year.’

There was a short silence.

‘Put your play on in March,’ said Gerbert.

‘That’s a bad time,’ said Françoise, ‘and besides, it won’t be ready.’

‘It’s not a question of producing my play at all costs,’ said Pierre. ‘It’s rather one of finding out just how much sense there is in producing plays at all.’

Françoise looked at him uneasily. A week earlier when they were at the Pôle Nord with Xavière, and he had referred to himself as an obstinate mule, she had chosen to interpret it as a momentary whim; but it seemed that a real anxiety was beginning to possess him.

‘You told me in September that, even if war came, we should have to go on living.’

‘Certainly, but how?’ Pierre vaguely contemplated his fingers. ‘Writing, producing … that’s not after all an end in itself.’

He was really perplexed and Françoise almost felt a grudge against him, but she must go on quietly trusting in him.

‘If that’s the way you look at it, what is an end in itself?’ she said.

‘That’s exactly the reason why nothing is simple,’ said Pierre. His face had taken on a clouded and almost stupid expression: the way he looked in the morning when, with his eyes still pink with sleep, he desperately began searching for his socks all over the room.

‘It’s half-past two, I’ll beat it,’ said Gerbert.

He was never the first to leave as a rule; he liked nothing so much as the moments he spent with Pierre.

‘Xavière is going to be late again,’ said Françoise. ‘It’s most aggravating. Your aunt is so particular that we should be there for the first glass of port sharp at three o’clock.’

‘She’s going to be bored stiff there,’ said Pierre. ‘We should have arranged to meet her afterwards.’

‘She wants to see what a private view is like,’ said Françoise. ‘I don’t know what her idea of it can be.’

‘You’ll have a good laugh!’ said Gerbert.

‘It’s one of aunt’s protégés,’ said Françoise, ‘we simply can’t get out of it. As it is, I cut the last cocktail party, and that didn’t go down too well.’

Gerbert got up and nodded to Pierre.

‘I’ll see you tonight.’

‘So long,’ said Françoise warmly. She watched him walk off in his big overcoat which flapped over his ankles; it was one of Péclard’s old casts-off. ‘That was all rather forced,’ she said.

‘He’s a charming young fellow, but we don’t have a great deal to say to each other,’ said Pierre.

‘He’s never been like that before; I thought he seemed very depressed. Perhaps it’s because we let him down on Friday night; but it was perfectly plausible that we should want to go home to bed right away when we were so exhausted.’

‘At least so long as nobody else ran into us,’ said Pierre.

‘Let’s say that we buried ourselves at the Pôle Nord, and then jumped straight into a taxi. There’s only Elisabeth, but I’ve warned her.’ Françoise ran her hand across the back of her head and smoothed her hair. ‘That would be a bore,’ she said. ‘Not so much the fact itself, but the lie, that would hurt him terribly.’

Gerbert had retained from his adolescence a rather timid touchiness and, above all, he dreaded feeling that he was in the way. Pierre was the only person in the world who really counted in his life; he was quite willing to be under some sort of obligation to him, but only if he felt that it was not from a sense of duty that Pierre took an interest in him.

‘No, there’s not a chance,’ said Pierre. ‘Besides, yesterday evening he was still gay and friendly.’

‘Perhaps he’s worried,’ said Françoise. It saddened her that Gerbert should be sad and that she could do nothing for him. She liked to know that he was happy: his steady and pleasant life delighted her. He worked with discernment and success. He had a few friends whose varied talents fascinated him: Mollier who played the banjo so well, Barrisson who spoke in flawless slang, Castier who had no trouble in holding six Pernods. Many an evening in the Montparnasse cafés he practised bearing up under Pernod with them: he had more success with the banjo. The rest of the time he deliberately shunned company. He went to the movies; he read; he wandered about Paris, cherishing modest and persistent little dreams.

‘Why doesn’t that girl come?’ said Pierre.

‘Perhaps she’s still asleep,’ said Françoise.

‘Of course not, yesterday evening when she dropped into my dressing-room she said quite clearly that she’d have herself called,’ said Pierre. ‘Perhaps she’s ill, but then she would have telephoned.’

‘Not she, she’s got a holy fear of the telephone, she thinks it’s an instrument of evil,’ said Françoise. ‘But I do think it’s likely she’s forgotten the time.’

‘She never forgets the time except out of spite,’ said Pierre, ‘and I don’t see why she should have a sudden change of mood.’

‘She does occasionally, for no known reason.’

‘There’s always a reason,’ said Pierre, a little irritably. ‘Only you don’t try to understand them.’

Françoise found his tone unpleasant; it was in no way her fault.

‘Let’s go and fetch her,’ said Pierre.

‘She’ll think that’s indiscreet,’ said Françoise. Perhaps she did treat Xavière rather like a piece of machinery, but at least she handled the delicate mechanism with the greatest care. It was very annoying to have to offend Aunt Christine; but, on the other hand, Xavière would take it greatly amiss if they were to go to her room to fetch her.

‘But it’s she who’s in the wrong,’ said Pierre. Françoise rose. After all, Xavière might be ill. Since her discussion with Pierre a week earlier, she had not had the slightest change of mood: the evening the three had spent together, the Friday after the dress rehearsal, had passed in cloudless merriment.

The hotel was quite close and it took them only a moment to get there. Three o’clock. There was not a minute more to be lost. As Françoise disappeared up the stairs the proprietress called her.

‘Mademoiselle Miquel, are you going to see Mademoiselle Pagès?’

‘Yes, why?’ said Françoise a little arrogantly. This plaintive old lady was fairly accommodating, but her inquisitiveness was sometimes misplaced.

‘I would like to have a word with you about her.’ The old woman stood hesitatingly on the threshold of the little drawing-room, but Françoise did not follow her in. ‘Mademoiselle Pagès complained a little while ago that the basin in her room was stopped up. I pointed out to her that she had been throwing tea-leaves, lumps of cotton-wool and slops into it.’ She added: ‘Her room is in such a mess! There are cigarette ends and fruit-pips in every corner, and the bedspread is singed all over.’

‘If you have any complaints to make about Mademoiselle Pagès, please speak to her,’ said Françoise.

‘I have done so,’ said the proprietress, ‘and she told me that she wouldn’t stay here one day more. I think she’s packing her bags. You’ll appreciate that I have no trouble in letting my rooms. I have enquiries every day and I’d be only too happy to let a tenant like that go. The way she keeps the lights burning all night long, you have no idea how much it costs me.’ She added, ingratiatingly: ‘Only because she’s a friend of yours, I wouldn’t want to inconvenience her. I wanted to tell you, that if she changes her mind I won’t raise any objections.’

Ever since Françoise had lived there, she had been treated with unusual consideration. She showered the good woman with complimentary tickets and the old lady was flattered by it: and, most important of all, she paid her rent very regularly.

‘I’ll tell her,’ said Françoise. ‘Thank you.’ With decisive steps, she went on up the stairs.

‘We can’t let that little wretch become a damned nuisance,’ said Pierre. ‘There are other hotels in Montparnasse.’

‘But I’m very comfortable in this one,’ said Françoise. It was well heated and well located: Françoise liked its mixed clientèle and the ugly-flowered wallpaper.

‘Shall we knock?’ said Françoise hesitantly. Pierre knocked. The door was opened with unexpected promptitude and Xavière stood there, bedraggled and almost scarlet in the face; she had pulled up the sleeves of her blouse and her skirt was covered with dust.

‘Oh, it’s you!’ she said with a look of complete surprise.

It was useless to try to anticipate Xavière’s greeting, one was always wrong. Françoise and Pierre stood rooted to the spot.

‘What are you doing here?’ said Pierre.

Xavière’s throat swelled.

‘I’m moving,’ she said in a tragic voice. The scene was stupefying. Françoise thought vaguely of Aunt Christine whose lips must have already begun to tighten, but everything seemed trivial in comparison with the cataclysm that had ravaged this room as well as Xavière’s face. Three suitcases lay gaping in the middle of the room; the cupboards had disgorged on to the floor piles of crumpled clothing, papers, and toilet articles.

‘And do you expect to be finished soon?’ asked Pierre who was looking sternly at this havoc-stricken sanctuary.

‘I’ll never get finished!’ said Xavière. She sank into an arm-chair and pressed her fingers against her forehead. ‘That old hag …’

‘She spoke to me just now,’ said Françoise. ‘She told me that you could stay on for tonight, if that suits you.’

‘Oh!’ said Xavière. A look of hope flashed into her eyes and died immediately. ‘No, I ought to leave at once.’

Françoise felt sorry for her.

‘But you aren’t going to find a room this evening.’

‘Oh, surely not,’ said Xavière. She bent her head and sat prostrated for some time. Françoise and Pierre stood as if spellbound, staring at her golden head.

‘Well, leave all that,’ said Françoise with a sudden return to consciousness. ‘Tomorrow we’ll go and look together.’

‘Leave this?’ said Xavière. ‘But I couldn’t live in this rubbish heap for even an hour.’

‘I’ll help you to tidy it up tonight,’ said Françoise. Xavière gave her a look of plaintive gratitude. ‘Listen to me. You are going to get dressed and wait for us at the Dôme. We’ll dash off to the private view and we’ll be back in an hour and a half.’

Xavière jumped to her feet and clutched her hair.

‘Oh, I would so like to go! I’ll be ready in ten minutes. I just have to tidy myself up a bit.’

‘Aunt has already begun to fume,’ said Françoise.

Pierre shrugged his shoulders.

‘In any case, we’ve missed the port,’ he said angrily. ‘Now, there’s no longer any point in getting there before five o’clock.’

‘As you wish,’ said Françoise. ‘But the blame will fall on me again.’

‘Well, after all, you don’t give a damn,’ said Pierre.

‘You’ll smile at her winningly,’ said Xavière.

‘All right,’ said Françoise. ‘You’ll have to think of a good excuse for us.’

‘I’ll try,’ grumbled Pierre.

‘Then we’ll wait for you in my room,’ said Françoise.

They went upstairs.

‘It’s an afternoon wasted,’ said Pierre. ‘There won’t be enough time left to go anywhere after we leave the exhibition.’

‘I told you she couldn’t learn how to live,’ said Françoise. She walked over to the looking-glass: with this upswept coiffure it was impossible to keep the back of one’s neck looking neat. ‘If only she doesn’t insist on moving.’

‘You haven’t got to move with her,’ said Pierre. He seemed furious. He had always been so cheerful with Françoise that she had almost reached the point of forgetting that he was not good-tempered, that his fits of anger were legendary at the theatre. If he took this affair as a personal offence, the afternoon was going to be grim.

‘But I will; you know that. She won’t insist, but she’ll sink into black despair.’

Françoise glanced over the room.

‘My nice little hotel. Fortunately, I can rely on her inertia.’

Pierre walked over to the pile of manuscripts stacked on the table.

‘You know,’ he said. ‘I think I’ll hang on to Monsieur le Vent. This fellow interests me, he ought to be encouraged. I’ll ask him to have dinner with us one of these evenings so that you can form some opinion of him.’

‘I also want to look at Hyacinthe,’ said Françoise. ‘I think it’s promising.’

‘Show it to me,’ said Pierre. He began to look through the manuscript and Françoise leaned over his shoulder to read with him. She was not in a good mood: alone with Pierre, she would have got the private view over and done with very quickly, but with Xavière about, everything tended to become burdensome, it made one feel that one was walking through life with clods of clay on the soles of one’s shoes. Pierre should never have decided to wait for her; even he looked as though he had got out of the wrong side of the bed. Nearly half an hour passed before Xavière knocked. Then they hurried downstairs.

‘Where do you want to go?’ said Françoise.

‘I don’t mind,’ said Xavière.

‘Since we’ve only an hour,’ said Pierre, ‘let’s go to the Dôme.’

‘How cold it is,’ said Xavière, tightening her scarf round her face.

‘It’s only a few steps from here,’ said Françoise.

‘We haven’t got the same conception of distance,’ said Xavière whose face was screwed up.

‘Or of time,’ said Pierre dryly.

Françoise was beginning to read Xavière very well. Xavière knew that she was in the wrong. She thought they were angry with her and she was taking the lead; and besides, her attempts at moving had worn her out. Françoise wanted to take her arm: wherever they had gone on Friday night, they had walked arm in arm, and kept in step.

‘No,’ said Xavière, ‘it’s much faster on one’s own.’

Pierre’s face darkened again, Françoise was afraid he was going to lose his temper. They sat down at the back of the café.

‘You know,’ said Françoise, ‘this private view won’t be at all interesting. Aunt’s protégés never have an ounce of talent, she’s never been known to fail in that respect.’

‘I don’t care a hang about that,’ said Xavière. ‘It’s the reception I’m interested in. Pictures always bore me stiff.’

‘That’s because you’ve never seen any,’ said Françoise. ‘If you were to come with me to exhibitions, or even go to the Louvre …’

‘That wouldn’t make any difference,’ said Xavière. She made a wry face. ‘A picture is so arid, it’s completely flat.’

‘If you were to get to know a little about it, I’m sure you would enjoy it,’ said Françoise.

‘You mean I would understand why I ought to enjoy it,’ said Xavière. ‘I’d never be satisfied with that. The day when I no longer feel anything, I’m not going to look for excuses to feel.’

‘What you call feeling is really a way of understanding,’ said Françoise. ‘You like music, well then …!’

Xavière stopped her short.

‘You know, when people speak about good and bad music, it goes right over my head,’ she said with aggressive modesty. ‘I don’t understand the first thing about it. I like the notes for themselves; the sound alone is enough for me.’ She looked Françoise in the eye. ‘The pleasures of the mind are repulsive to me.’

When Xavière was being obstinate it was useless to argue. Françoise looked reproachfully at Pierre; after all, it was he who had wanted to wait for Xavière, he could at least join in the conversation, instead of entrenching himself behind a sardonic smile.

‘I warn you that the reception, as you call it, is not a bit amusing,’ said Françoise. ‘Just a lot of people exchanging polite remarks.’

‘Oh, still there’ll be a crowd, and excitement,’ said Xavière in a tone of passionate insistence.

‘Do you feel a need for excitement now?’

‘Of course I need it!’ said Xavière, and a wild untamed look glinted in her eyes. ‘Shut up in that room from morning till night, why, I’ll go mad! I can’t stand it there any more, you can have no idea how happy I’ll be to leave that place.’

‘Who prevents you from going out?’ asked Pierre.

‘You say that there isn’t any fun in going dancing with women, but Begramian or Gerbert would be only too glad to take you, and they dance very well,’ said Françoise.

Xavière shook her head.

‘Once you decide to have a good time to order, it’s always pitiful.’

‘You want everything to fall into your lap like manna from heaven,’ said Françoise, ‘you don’t deign to lift your little finger, and then you proceed to take it out on everyone. Obviously …’

‘There must be some countries in the world,’ said Xavière, as if in a dream, ‘warm countries – Greece or Sicily – where it surely isn’t necessary to lift a finger.’ She scowled. ‘Here you have to grab with both hands – and to get what?’

‘You have to do the same out there,’ said Françoise.

Xavière’s eyes began to sparkle.

‘Where is that red island that’s completely surrounded by boiling water?’ she said hungrily.

‘Santorin, one of the isles of Greece,’ said Françoise. ‘But that isn’t exactly what I told you. Only the cliffs are red, and the sea boils only between two small black islets thrown up by volcanic eruptions. Oh, I remember,’ she said, warming to her subject, ‘a lake of sulphurous water in the midst of the lava. It was all yellow and edged by a peninsula as black as anthracite and on the other side of this black strip the sea was a dazzling blue.’

Xavière looked at her with rapt attention.

‘When I think of all you’ve seen,’ she said in a voice filled with resentment.

‘You consider that it’s quite undeserved,’ said Pierre.

Xavière looked him up and down. She pointed to the dirty leather banquettes, the grubby tables.

‘To think, after seeing all that, that you can come and sit here.’

‘What good would it do to pine away with regrets?’ asked Françoise.

‘Of course, you don’t want to have any regrets,’ said Xavière. ‘You are so anxious to be happy.’ She looked away into space. ‘But I wasn’t born resigned.’

Françoise was cut to the quick. Surely she couldn’t contemptuously push aside the acceptance of this happiness that seemed to her so clearly to be asserting itself. Right or wrong, she no longer regarded Xavière’s words as outbursts: they held a complete set of values that ran counter to hers. However much she refused to acknowledge this fact, its existence was awkward.

‘This life of ours is no resignation,’ she said sharply. ‘We love Paris, and these streets, and these cafés.’

‘How can anyone love sordid places, and hideous things, and all these wretched people?’ Xavière’s voice emphasized her epithets with disgust.

‘The point is that the whole world interests us,’ said Françoise. ‘You happen to be a little aesthete. You want unadulterated beauty; but that’s a very narrow point of view.’

‘Am I supposed to be interested in that saucer because it presumes to exist?’ asked Xavière, and she looked at the saucer with annoyance. ‘It’s quite enough that it’s there.’ With intentional naïveté she added: ‘I should have thought that when one is an artist, it is just because one likes beautiful things.’

‘That depends on what you call beautiful things,’ said Pierre.

Xavière stared at him.

‘Heavens! you’re listening,’ she said, wide-eyed but gently. ‘I thought you were lost in deep thought.’

‘I’m paying close attention.’

‘You’re not in a very good mood,’ said Xavière, still smiling.

‘I’m in an excellent mood,’ said Pierre. ‘I think we’re spending a most delightful afternoon. We’re about to start off for the private view, and when we’re through with that, we’ll have just enough time to eat a sandwich. That works out perfectly.’

‘You think it’s all my fault,’ said Xavière, showing more of her teeth.

‘I certainly don’t think it’s mine,’ said Pierre.

It was simply for the purpose of behaving disagreeably towards Xavière that he had insisted on meeting her again as soon as possible. ‘He might have given me a thought,’ Françoise reflected with bitterness; she was beginning to find the situation intolerable.

‘That’s true. When for once in a while you’ve got some free time,’ said Xavière, whose grin became more perceptible, ‘what a tragedy it is, if a little of it is wasted!’

This reproach surprised Françoise. Had she once more misread Xavière? Only four days had passed since Friday and at the theatre, yesterday evening, Pierre had greeted Xavière most amiably. She would already have to be very fond of him to feel that she had been neglected.

Xavière turned to Françoise.

‘I imagined the life of writers and artists to be something quite different,’ she said in a sophisticated tone. ‘I had no idea it was regulated like that – by the ring of a bell.’

‘You would have preferred them to wander about in the storm with their hair streaming in the wind?’ said Françoise, who felt herself grow utterly fatuous under Pierre’s mocking look.

‘No. Baudelaire didn’t let his hair stream in the wind,’ said Xavière. She continued more naturally: ‘What it amounts to is that, except for him and Rimbaud, artists are just like civil servants.’

‘Because we do a little work regularly every day?’ Françoise asked.

Xavière pouted coyly.

‘And then you count the number of hours you sleep, you eat two meals a day, you pay visits, and you never go for a walk one without the other. It couldn’t possibly be otherwise …’

‘But do you consider that unbearable?’ asked Françoise with a forced smile. This was not a flattering picture of themselves which Xavière was showing them.

‘It seems queer to sit down every day at one’s desk and write line after line of sentences,’ said Xavière. ‘I admit that people should write, of course,’ she added quickly. ‘There’s something voluptuous about words. But only when the spirit moves you.’

‘It’s possible to have a desire for a piece of work as a whole,’ said Françoise. She felt a little inclined to justify herself in Xavière’s eyes.

‘I admire the exalted level of your conversation,’ said Pierre. His malicious smile was aimed at Françoise as well as at Xavière, and Françoise was disconcerted; was he able to judge her objectively, like a stranger, she who could never bring herself to keep the slightest thing from him? This was disloyalty.

Xavière never batted an eyelash. ‘It becomes home-work,’ she said and she laughed indulgently. ‘But then that’s the way you always do things, you turn everything into a duty.’

‘What do you mean?’ said Françoise. ‘I can assure you that I don’t feel myself so particularly handicapped.’