"I couldn't do it for less than five hundred and fifty," she said firmly. "Monsieur must understand. I had some savings, but they were all used up during that horrible journey."

"You left Paris?"

"During the exodus, yes, Monsieur. Bombed and everything, quite apart from nearly starving to death on the road. Monsieur doesn't know how bad it was."

"But I do know, I do," Charlie said, sighing. "I too was on the road. Such sad events! We'll say five hundred and fifty, then. But listen now, I'm agreeing because I think you will earn it. I insist on absolute honesty."

"Oh, Monsieur!" said Hortense in a discreetly scandalised tone of voice, as if the thought alone would have wounded her to the core, and Charlie was quick to smile at her reassuringly, to make her see he was only saying it as a formality, that he didn't doubt her absolute integrity for a moment and that moreover the very idea of such dishonesty was so unbearable to him that he wouldn't give it another thought.

"I hope you are good at what you do and careful. I have a collection that is very important to me. I don't allow anyone to dust the most precious pieces, but this display cabinet over here, for example, I would trust you with."

As he seemed to be inviting her to have a look, Hortense glanced at the half-unpacked cases. "Monsieur has some very beautiful things. Before going into service for the Countess's mother I worked for an American, Mr. Mortimer Shaw. He collected ivory pieces."

"Mortimer Shaw? What a coincidence, I know him well! He's an eminent antiques dealer."

"He's retired, Monsieur."

"And were you with him long?"

"Four years. They were the only two jobs I had."

Charlie stood up and saw Hortense to the door, saying encouragingly, "Come back tomorrow for a definite decision, will you? If the verbal references are as good as your written ones, which I don't doubt for a moment, then you're hired. Could you start right away?"

"On Monday, if Monsieur would like."

After Hortense had gone, Charlie hurried to change his collar and cuffs and wash his hands. He had had a lot to drink at the bar. He felt extraordinarily light-headed and pleased with himself. He didn't wait for the lift, an ancient, slow piece of equipment, but sped down the stairs like a young man. He was going to meet his lovely friends, a charming woman. He was delighted to be able to introduce them to the little restaurant he'd discovered.

"I wonder if they've got any of that Corton wine left," he thought. The great courtyard door with its wooden panels engraved with Sirens and Tritons (a marvel, classified a work of art by the Council for Historic Monuments of Paris) opened and closed behind him with a faint creak. Once outside, Charlie was immediately plunged into impenetrable darkness but, feeling as happy and free as a twenty-year-old, he crossed the road without a care and headed for the quayside. He'd forgotten his torch, "But I know every step of the way in my neighbourhood," he said to himself. "All I have to do is follow the Seine and cross the Pont Marie. There won't be many cars." And at the very moment he was mentally saying these words, a car passed two feet in front of him, going extremely fast, its headlights (painted blue in accordance with regulations) giving off only the faintest light. Startled, he jumped backwards, slipped, felt himself lose his balance, flailed his arms about and, finding nothing to grab on to, fell into the road.

The car swerved and a woman's voice screamed in terror, "Watch out!"

It was too late.

"I've had it. I'm going to be run over! To have made it through so much danger to end up like this, it's too… it's too ridiculous… Someone's playing a trick on me… Someone, somewhere is playing this horrible, bad trick on me…"

Just as a bird, terrified by a gunshot, flies out of its nest and disappears, so this final conscious thought went through Charlie's mind and vanished at the same moment as his life. He took a terrible blow to the head. The car's fender had shattered his skull. Blood and brains spurted out with such force that a few drops landed on the woman who was driving-a pretty woman, wearing a hat, hardly bigger than a cocktail napkin, made of two sable skins sewn together and a russet veil over her golden hair. It was Ariette Corail, back from Bordeaux the week before. She looked down at the body. "What rotten luck," she mumbled, devastated, "but really, what rotten luck!"

She was a cautious woman and had her torch with her. She examined the man's face, at least what was left of it, and recognised Charles Langelet. "Oh, the poor guy!… I was going fast, all right, but he couldn't have been paying attention, the silly fool! What am I going to do now?"

Nevertheless, she remembered that her insurance, licence, pass, were all in order, and she knew someone influential who would fix everything for her. Somewhat reassured but her heart still pounding, she sat down for a moment on the car's running board, lit a cigarette, fixed her makeup with trembling hands, then went to get help.

Madame Logre had finally finished cleaning the study and library. She went into the drawing room to get the vacuum cleaner. As she pulled out the plug, the handle of the vacuum cleaner knocked against the table where the Venus at the Looking Glass was displayed. Madame Logre screamed: the statuette had fallen on to the floor. The head of Venus was smashed to bits.

Madame Logre wiped her forehead with her apron, hesitated a moment, then, leaving the statuette where it was, put the vacuum cleaner away. After that, in a manner that was surprising for such a stout woman, she rushed silently and nimbly out of the apartment. "Right, I'll just say the door flew open and a gust of wind knocked the statue over. It's his fault too! Why leave it at the edge of the table? And anyway," she said angrily, "I don't care what he says. He can go to hell for all I care!"

30

If anyone had told Jean-Marie that he would one day find himself in a remote village far from his regiment, with no money, no way to communicate with his family, not knowing whether they were safe and sound in Paris or, like so many others, buried in a shell hole somewhere beside a road, and above all, if anyone had told him that, after France had been defeated, he would still be alive and would sometimes even be happy, he wouldn't have believed it. Yet that was what had happened. The very magnitude of the disaster, the fact that they had passed the point of no return, in itself provided some consolation, just as certain deadly poisons provide their own antidote: all his suffering was irreversible. He couldn't change the fact that the Maginot Line had been circumvented, or broken through (no one knew for sure), that two million soldiers had been taken prisoner, that France had been defeated. He couldn't make the post, the telegraphs or the telephones work, couldn't get hold of any petrol or a car to go to the railway station twenty-one kilometres away, and there weren't any trains anyway as the tracks had been destroyed. He couldn't walk to Paris for he had been seriously wounded and was only now just starting to get out of bed. He couldn't pay his hosts, for he had no money and no way of getting any. It was too much for him; all he could do was calmly stay where he was and wait.

This feeling of absolute dependence on other people brought about a kind of peace within him. He didn't even have his own clothes: his uniform had been torn and burned in places so he wore a khaki shirt and spare pair of trousers belonging to one of the farmhands. Meanwhile, he had managed to get himself demobilised by secretly crossing the demarcation line and giving a false address; so he no longer ran the risk of being taken prisoner. He was still living on the farm, but since he had recovered, he had moved from the bed in the kitchen to a little room above the hayloft. Through its round window he could see lovely, peaceful fields, fertile land and woods. At night he could hear mice scurrying above his head and the cooing of doves in the dovecote.