On 30 March, at midnight, the Baragliouls arrived back in Paris and their apartment in Rue de Verneuil.

While Marguerite was getting ready for bed, Julius, carrying a small lamp and wearing slippers, went into his study, a room he always returned to with pleasure. It was soberly decorated: a few Lépines and a Boudin hung on the walls and on a revolving plinth in one corner stood a marble bust of his wife by Chapu, its whiteness a little dazzling. In the middle of the room was an enormous Renaissance table on which books, pamphlets and prospectuses had been piled up in his absence. On it there was also a tray of cloisonné enamel with several dog-eared visiting cards, and set apart from them, propped conspicuously against a bronze Barye sculpture, a letter on which Julius recognised his elderly father’s handwriting. He immediately tore the envelope open and read.

My dear son,

My strength has faded greatly in recent days. Certain unmistakable signs are giving me to understand that it is time to pack my bags, and indeed I feel there is little to be gained by delaying much longer.

I know you are arriving back at Paris tonight and I count on your willingness to do me a service without delay. In view of certain arrangements of which I shall inform you as soon as the task is carried out, I need to know whether a young man by the name of Lafcadio Wluiki (pronounced ‘Louki’; the w and i are almost silent) is still living at 12, Impasse Claude-Bernard.

I should be obliged if you would be so kind as to present yourself at this address and ask to see the above-named. (Being the novelist that you are, you will have no difficulty in finding a pretext to introduce yourself.) It is important to me to know

1) what the young man is doing

2) what he intends to do (does he have ambitions? On what scale?)

3) generally, tell me what means of support he seems to you to have, what sort of aptitudes, appetites and tastes …

Don’t try to see me for the time being: I’m in a bitterly bad mood. You can let me have the results of your enquiries in a short note. If I find myself disposed to talk, or if I feel close to my final exit, I shall let you know.

Affectionately yours,

JUSTE-AGÉNOR DE BARAGLIOUL

PS Do not under any circumstances allow it to be known that you have come on my behalf. The young man knows nothing about me and should continue to know nothing.

Lafcadio Wluiki is now nineteen years old. Romanian subject. Orphan.

I have had a look at your latest book. If you don’t get into the Académie after that, then writing such codswallop is unforgivable.

It could not be denied: Julius’s latest book was getting a bad press. Despite his tiredness, he skimmed through the newspaper cuttings, in which his name was quoted mostly unfavourably. Afterwards he opened a window and stood taking deep breaths of the misty night air. Julius’s study windows looked out onto an embassy’s garden with its pools of purifying shadow, in which eyes and mind could wash themselves clean of the vileness of the world and the streets. For a few moments he listened to the clear song of an invisible blackbird. Then he walked back to their bedroom, where Marguerite was already asleep.

Fearing insomnia, he took a small bottle of orange-flower  water he often used from the chest of drawers. Attentive to the courtesies of the bedroom, he had taken the precaution of placing the lamp, with lowered wick, below where his wife might be bothered by it, but a faint tinkle of crystal as he put down his glass penetrated to the depths of Marguerite’s sleep. Giving an animal moan, she turned towards the wall. Glad to have an excuse to believe she was awake, Julius went over to her and, while he was undressing, said, ‘Do you want to know what my father says about my book?’

‘My dearest, your poor father has no literary sense, you’ve told me a hundred times,’ Marguerite murmured, only wanting to go back to sleep. But Julius was too hurt.

‘He says I’m unspeakable for having written such codswallop.’

An extended silence followed, in which Marguerite sank into sleep again and lost all sight of literature, and Julius began to accept his solitary unhappiness. Then, out of love for her husband, Marguerite made a great effort and returned to wakefulness.

‘I hope you’re not going to fret about it.’

‘I’m taking it quite coolly, as you can see,’ Julius answered straight away. ‘But I feel it’s quite inappropriate for my father to express himself that way, more inappropriate for my father than for anyone else, and particularly about that book which, strictly speaking, is a monument to him in every respect.’

Had he not, in fact, retraced the elderly diplomat’s entire exemplary career in the book? And had he not balanced its novelistic excitements by underlining Juste-Agénor’s dignified, calm and classical existence in both its aspects, political and domestic?

‘Luckily you didn’t write the book for him to be grateful to you.’

‘He’s insinuating that I wrote The Air on the Heights to get myself into the Académie.’

‘What if you did? And what if you got into the Académie for having written a wonderful book?’ She added, in a tone of pity, ‘Anyway, let’s hope the reviews show him how wrong he is.’

Julius erupted.

‘The reviews! Oh yes! Let’s talk about the reviews!’ Turning furiously to Marguerite, as though they were all her fault, he went on with a bitter laugh, ‘They’re panning me, every one of them.’

Marguerite was at last wide awake.

‘Are they really very bad?’ she asked with concern.

‘Yes, and the ones that aren’t praise me with touching hypocrisy.’

‘How right you were to despise all those journalists! But remember what Monsieur de Vogüé wrote to you the day before yesterday. “A pen like yours defends France like a sword.”’

‘“Against the barbarism that threatens us, a pen like yours defends France better than a sword,”’ Julius corrected her.

‘When Cardinal André promised you his vote recently, he reminded you that you had the whole Church behind you.’

‘A fat lot of good it’ll do me!’

‘Dearest!’

‘We’ve just witnessed with our brother-in-law what the lofty protection of the Church is worth.’

‘Julius, you’re becoming bitter. You’ve often said to me that you didn’t work with any reward in view, or the approval of others, and that your own was enough for you. You’ve even written about it very beautifully.’

‘I know, I know,’ Julius said irritably.

The deep agitation he felt was not at all assuaged by her honeyed words. He went into the bathroom.

Why was he getting worked up like this? So pathetically, and in front of his wife? His distress wasn’t the sort that a spouse could fuss over or sympathise with. He ought to keep it locked up in his heart, out of pride and self-restraint. ‘Codswallop!’ As he cleaned his teeth, he couldn’t stop dwelling on the word, driving out any nobler thoughts. Good God! It was only a book. He would put his father’s words out of his mind. At least he would forget that they had come from his father … An unwelcome self-questioning began to torment him for the first time in his life – he who up to now had received nothing but smiles and approval began to doubt the sincerity of those smiles, the value of that approval – the value of his writing – the reality of his thought, the authenticity of his life …

He went back to the bedroom, distractedly holding his tooth-mug in one hand, his toothbrush in the other. He put down the glass, half full of pink water, on the chest of drawers and dropped his toothbrush into it, and sat down at a little maplewood writing desk that Marguerite used for writing her letters. He snatched up his wife’s pen-holder and a sheet of delicately perfumed, violet-coloured writing paper and started to write.

For Julius was one of those honourable men whose true greatness emerges when they feel most wounded. Leaning right back on his chair, he stayed in that position for a few moments, pen poised, weighing his words.

No. Perhaps,

The phrase would not come. Julius was in his nightshirt. Feeling that he was about to catch cold, he crumpled up the sheet of writing paper, picked up the tooth-mug and went to put it back in the bathroom, tossing the discarded writing paper into the slop bucket.

As he was getting into bed, he gently shook his wife’s shoulder.

‘So what do you think of it? My book?’

Marguerite half opened a mournful eye. Julius had to repeat his question. Half turning, she looked at him. Tight-lipped, with raised eyebrows beneath a mass of anxious wrinkles, he was a pitiful picture.

‘Dearest, what is wrong with you? Do you honestly think your last book is less good than your others?’

It was not a proper answer. Marguerite was avoiding the question.

‘Well, I don’t think the others are any better than this one, if that’s what you mean!’

‘Oh, well then …!’

Losing heart in the face of Julius’s huffiness, and feeling that her loving attempts to soothe him were being rejected, Marguerite turned away from the light and went back to sleep.