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“With our bare fists?”

“You have to hope,” Jean Luze replies more gently. “Those who sow hatred will reap it one day. Those who beat and torture are only cogs in an already weak system. Behind their hatred lie other hatreds. You have to hold it together and wait for your moment.”

Joël listens to him passionately.

Oh, imagine following him in pursuit of some impossible dream! Yes, he’s an idealist. But how rejuvenating it is to hope wildly and even dream about building a new and better world.

Last night he entertained Joël’s friends. Sad poets, overcome with alcoholism, who stumble along the walls when the sun goes down. He has found people to protect, guide, advise. He feels he’s doing something useful with his life. Maybe thanks to them he will decide not to leave!

“Jean has finally made some friends,” Félicia says. “I hear Joël is incredibly intelligent, and that he likes music and books as well.”

How lonely he must have been! I am ashamed of us. Oh! What I wouldn’t give to get rid of my complexes. They stop me from opening my mouth and expressing my ideas even when I’m choking on them. We put all of our intellect in the service of profit and flattery Whatever Dr. Audier says, terror has turned us into resigned cowards. Who will help us? Who is fearless and has the courage to cry out the truth if not Jean Luze? I listen without taking part in any of these conversations. The screams wafting from the prison make both of us wince. “Filthy torturer! Filthy torturer!” he muttered the other night, angrily running his hand through his hair. He’ll end up making himself a suspect. I can see the moment when Calédu will accuse him of meeting with “suspicious intellectuals.” My silent hatred has even contaminated Félicia. “I can’t take it anymore,” she once burst out, covering her ears … She was so afraid of her own voice that she suddenly fell silent with her eyes closed and her mouth agape. And I could see her lashes trembling with tears.

Eugénie Duclan is getting married. She is happy as a lark, going door-to-door to announce the joyful event. Annette bursts out laughing when she shares the news with Félicia.

“Paul is sure that poor Charles has been ‘past it’ for ages, if you know what I mean. Eugénie will be so disappointed! But who would think to get married at that age!”

She takes me as her witness.

It seems that past a certain age, marrying for the sake of convenience is as ridiculous as marrying for love. Custom is as powerful as fashion—impossible to disregard either without giving offense.

Eugénie Duclan

is so bold

at forty years old

to let it all hang …

sings Annette. She did not invent the song, everyone knows it, as she is amused to tell Félicia.

Eugénie wants a first-class wedding and dares invite me to be part of her procession along with the other Daughters of Mary. She has done her hair and made herself up like a young girl. It looks like she’s wearing a wrinkled, sexless, tragic mask.

“I know people are making fun of me,” she tells me, “but that’s too bad. Would you agree to be my maid of honor? We have to stick together …”

Who should stick together, and why?

I nearly throw her out after promising to do everything she wants. The only thing I’m afraid of is Jean Luze catching me in such grotesque company. I don’t care to belong to any sisterhood. The idea that I’m an old maid, set apart and original, pleases me …

Jean Luze is talking with Joël in the living room as Annette flits around them. Félicia is nursing Jean-Claude. Jean Luze is so absorbed in conversation that he doesn’t even notice Annette’s presence. He is leaning over Joël and speaking to him in a low voice. It’s Joël who seems distracted. His eyes follow Annette, and Jean Luze turns around angrily.

“Why are you buzzing around us?” he asks her.

“Me, buzzing around you?” she asks, taken aback. “But I’m doing no such thing.”

She runs downstairs and joins Félicia in the dining room.

“Apparently, I am a nuisance to our gentlemen and their philosophical discussions. I wonder what your husband thinks is so special about that little