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“Go on, close up?”

“Things could have ended up going sour.”

“Maurice, do you really think that I could think …?”

“Oh, for God’s sake!” said the young man.

“But why did you write to me, Maurice, instead of telling me in person?”

“Well, precisely to avoid what is happening between us right now.”

“So are you annoyed, Maurice, that I think enough of you to come and ask for an explanation?”

“No! Just the opposite,” cried Maurice, “and I’m more than happy, I can tell you, to have seen you again one last time before giving up ever seeing you again.”

“Ever seeing you again, citizen! But we are so very fond of you,” said Dixmer, seizing the young man’s hand and giving it a squeeze.

Maurice flinched.

“Morand,” continued Dixmer, well aware Maurice was trying to disguise a tremor, “Morand said to me again this morning: ‘Do everything you can to bring back our dear Maurice.’ ”

“Ah, monsieur!” said the young man, scowling and pulling back his hand, “I wouldn’t have thought I was so high up on citizen Morand’s list of friends.”

“You doubt it?” asked Dixmer.

“I neither believe it or doubt it, I have no reason to question myself on the subject at all; whenever I went to your place, Dixmer, I went only for you and your wife, not for citizen Morand.”

“You don’t know him, Maurice,” said Dixmer. “Morand is a beautiful soul.”

“I’m sure he is,” said Maurice with a bitter little smile.

“Now, let’s get back to the purpose of my visit.”

Maurice inclined his head to signal that Dixmer could go ahead; he himself had nothing further to say.

“So you’re saying tongues have been wagging?”

“Yes, citizen,” said Maurice.

“All right, then let’s speak frankly. Why would you take any notice of the idle gossip of busybodies who have nothing better to do? Come, Maurice, don’t you have a clear conscience and doesn’t Geneviève have her honesty?”

“I’m younger than you,” said Maurice, who was starting to marvel at the man’s insistence. “And perhaps I’m a little more thin-skinned. This is why I say that the reputation of a woman like Geneviève should not be the subject of even the idle gossip of busybodies who have nothing better to do. Allow me therefore, dear Dixmer, to persist in my initial resolution.”

“Come,” said Dixmer, “since we seem to be going in for confessions, confess something else.”

“What?” asked Maurice, going red. “What do you want me to confess?”

“That it is neither politics nor talk about how often you’re at my place that has made you decide to drop us.”

“What is it, then?”

“The secret you’ve discovered.”

“What secret?” Maurice asked with a naïve curiosity that reassured the tanner.

“That contraband business you stumbled onto the very night we met in such a memorable way. You’ve never forgiven me for being involved in fraud, and you accuse me of being a bad republican because I use English products in my tannery.”

“My dear Dixmer,” said Maurice, “I swear to you that I completely forgot, whenever I went to your place, that I was in the home of a black marketeer.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“You don’t have any other motive, then, for abandoning the place other than what you’ve said?”

“On my honor.”

“Well then, Maurice,” said Dixmer, getting up and shaking the young man’s hand, “I hope you’ll think it over and go back on this resolution of yours that hurts us all so much.”

Maurice inclined his head without answering—which amounted to a final rejection. Dixmer left in despair at having failed in his bid to win back a man whom certain circumstances rendered not only useful but quite indispensable.

It was high time he left, for Maurice was torn by a thousand contradictory emotions. Since Dixmer begged him to come back, Geneviève might be able to forgive him. So why did he feel despair? In his place Lorin would most certainly have a host of aphorisms to pluck from his favorite authors. But there was Geneviève’s letter, that formal dismissal which he’d carried with him to the section and learned by heart along with the note he’d received from her the day after he’d rescued