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Lorin had said these words with all the gentleness he was capable of, glossing over the whole thing with an artfulness worthy of Cicero. Maurice contented himself with a gesture of protest. But the gesture was declared null and void, and Lorin continued:

“Oh! If we lived in some controlled hothouse climate, a forthright, honest climate, where the barometer invariably sat on sixteen degrees Celsius according to the laws of botany, I’d say to you, my dear Maurice, how elegant, how just the ticket; let’s be a bit aristocratic from time to time, it does you good and it smells so nice. But we’re frying today in thirty-five to forty degree heat! The tablecloth is burning—next to it anyone is merely lukewarm; compared with that kind of heat anyone looks cold. And when one is cold, one is suspect. You know that as well as I do, Maurice. And when one is suspect—you have too much intelligence not to see, my dear Maurice, not to know what one is shortly after that. Or, rather, what one no longer is.”

“Well then! So! Let them kill me and get it over with!” cried Maurice. “I’m tired of living anyway.”

“For the last quarter of an hour!” said Lorin. “Actually, we don’t have enough time left for me to let you have your way; then again, when a person dies these days, you understand, it has to be as a republican, whereas you would die an aristocrat.”

“Oh! Christ!” Maurice exploded, his blood beginning to boil thanks to the agonizing pain caused by consciousness of his own guilt. “Christ! You’re going too far, my friend.”

“I’ll go further still, for, I warn you, if you turn yourself into an aristocrat …”

“You’ll denounce me?”

“Honestly! No! But I’ll lock you in a cellar and make them search for you to the sound of drums, like some missing object. Then I’ll declare that the aristocrats, knowing what you had in store for them, have sequestered you, starved you, martyred you; so that when they find you, you’ll be crowned publicly with flowers, like the Provost de Beaumont, Monsieur Latude, et al., by the ladies of Les Halles2 and the ragpickers of the Victor section. So hurry up and start acting like Aristides again or the outcome is a foregone conclusion.”

“Lorin, Lorin, I know you’re right, but I’m being dragged down, I’m sliding downhill. Do you hold it against me if fate is dragging me down?”

“I don’t hold it against you, but I will pull you back up. Remember the trouble Pylades kicked up for Orestes on a daily basis? Proving triumphantly that friendship is nothing if not a paradox, since such model friends bicker and fight from morning to night.”

“Forget me, Lorin, you’d be better off.”

“Never!”

“Then let me love and go insane at my leisure; I may even be a criminal, for if I see her again I feel I might well murder her.”

“Or fall at her feet … Ah, Maurice! Maurice in love with an aristocrat: who’d have thought it! You’re like that pathetic Osselin, member of the Convention, who fell in love with the marquise de Charny.”3

“That’s enough, Lorin, please.”

“Maurice, I’ll get you over it or rot in hell. I don’t want you to win Sainte Guillotine’s lottery, that I do not, as the grocer of the rue des Lombards would say. Watch you don’t push me too far, Maurice. You’ll turn me into a blood drinker. Maurice, I feel the need to set fire to the île Saint Louis: a torch, a firebrand!

“But no, I should just quiet down.

Why demand a torch, a flambeau?

Your fire’s enough, Maurice, you beau

To burn your soul, this place, the town.”

Maurice couldn’t help but smile in spite of himself.

“You know we agreed to speak only in prose?” he said.

“Yes, but you exasperate me with your madness,” said Lorin. “And … here, come and have a drink, Maurice. Let’s get sozzled, let’s move motions, and study political economics. But for the love of Jupiter, don’t let’s be in love, let’s love only liberty.”

“Or Reason.”

“Ah! Good point! By the way, the goddess sends you her greetings and finds you a charming mortal.”

“And you’re not jealous?”

“Maurice, to save a friend, I feel myself capable of any sacrifice.”

“Thank you,