The moral regime under which Julius de Baraglioul lived was both provisional and protracted, the same regime to which Descartes had submitted while he perfected the permanent system of rules that would govern his life and work in future. But Julius’s temperament did not express itself with such intransigence, nor his thinking with such authority, that he had so far had great difficulty in conforming to social convention. All things considered, his clear priority was his comfort, of which his success as a man of letters was a large part. With his latest novel having flopped, he felt the pricking discomfort of failure for the first time.
He had been more than somewhat put out to find himself turned away at his father’s. He would have been even more so to discover who had forestalled him in gaining access to the old man. And returning from Place Malesherbes to Rue de Verneuil, he resisted more and more feebly the outlandish suspicion that had been bothering him since he first went to Lafcadio’s room. He too had tied facts and dates together. He too began to refuse to accept that this strange collision of circumstances was no more than a simple coincidence. In addition, Lafcadio’s youth and grace had attracted him, and although it occurred to him that his father probably would deprive him of a portion of his inheritance in favour of this new bastard brother, he did not bear him any grudge. As he waited for him the next morning, he realised with surprise that he was feeling a rather tender and attentive curiosity about him.
As for Lafcadio, however prickly and withdrawn he was by nature, he found both the rare chance to talk, and the opportunity to ruffle Julius’s feathers, tempting. Even Protos had not been someone he had ever taken into his confidence very much. How far he had come since those days! And after all he did not dislike Julius, however vapid he seemed. He enjoyed the idea that he was his brother.
As he was making his way to where Julius lived, the morning after Julius’s visit to Impasse Claude-Bernard, a peculiar chain of events occurred. Out of a liking for detours, possibly guided by his unconscious, and also to pacify an unquietness of mind and body and keen to arrive fully in control of himself at his brother’s, Lafcadio had gone the longest way round he could think of. Walking up Boulevard des Invalides, he had passed close to the scene of yesterday’s fire and then continued via Rue de Bellechasse.
‘34 Rue de Verneuil,’ he repeated to himself as he walked. ‘Four and three, seven: good number.’
He was coming out onto Rue Saint-Dominique, where it runs into Boulevard Saint-Germain, when he thought he saw on the other side of the boulevard the girl who, since the previous day, had constantly occupied his thoughts. He walked faster … It was her. He caught up with her at the other end of the short Rue de Villersexel, then, thinking it was not very Baraglioul-like to accost her, made do with smiling as he bowed slightly and discreetly raised his hat to her. Walking quickly past, he felt the most sensible thing to do was dive into a tobacconist’s while she, walking ahead once more, turned into Rue de l’Université.
Emerging from the tobacconist’s, Lafcadio took the direction she had taken, looking left and right down the street. She had vanished.
Lafcadio, my friend, you are descending into cliché. If you have to fall in love, don’t rely on my pen to portray the confusion of your heart …
But no: he decided it would be undignified to start looking for her. Nor did he want to arrive too late at Julius’s, and the detour he had made had left him no more time for procrastinating. Luckily Rue de Verneuil was close by, and Julius’s building was on the first corner. Lafcadio called the count’s name to the concierge and dashed up the stairs.
At the same time Geneviève de Baraglioul – for it was she, Julius’s elder daughter, on her way back from the Hospital for Sick Children, where she went every morning – had reached her father’s apartment in a great hurry. A good deal more agitated than Lafcadio by their second meeting, she had gone in through the carriage entrance at exactly the same moment as Lafcadio had turned the corner into Rue de Verneuil, and she was just reaching the second floor when the sound of hurrying footsteps made her turn round. Someone was running upstairs faster than she was. She stood back to let them pass, and then, recognising Lafcadio – who had stopped dead, speechless, in front of her – she said in the most indignant tone she could muster, ‘Don’t you think it demeans you, Monsieur, to stalk me like this?’
‘Oh God! Mademoiselle, what must you think of me?’ Lafcadio blurted out. ‘I don’t suppose you’ll believe me if I tell you that I didn’t see you come into the building, and that no one could be more surprised than I am to find you here. But isn’t this the address of Count Julius de Baraglioul?’
‘What?’ Geneviève said, blushing. ‘Are you the new secretary my father is expecting? Monsieur Lafcadio Wlou— Your name’s so strange I don’t know how to say it.’ As Lafcadio, reddening too, bowed, she went on, ‘Since we have met again here, Monsieur, can I ask you to do me the great favour of not saying anything to my parents about yesterday’s adventure, which I don’t think is their kind of thing at all, or about the purse, which I told them I’ve lost.’
‘Mademoiselle, I was likewise going to beg you not to say anything about the ridiculous role you saw me playing yesterday. I share your parents’ feelings: I don’t understand it and I completely disapprove of it. You must have thought I was a Newfoundland or something. I couldn’t help it … Forgive me. I still have things to learn … I’ll learn them, I promise you … Will you give me your hand?’
Geneviève de Baraglioul, who had not admitted to herself that she thought Lafcadio very handsome, did not admit to him that, far from looking ridiculous, he was a hero in her eyes. She held out her hand, and he swept it impulsively to his lips. Then, smiling happily, she asked him to go back downstairs a few steps and wait till she had gone inside and shut the door before he rang the bell himself, so that no one caught sight of them together, and also particularly asked him not to reveal, under any circumstances, that they had met before.
A few minutes later Lafcadio was shown into the novelist’s study.
Julius’s greeting was welcoming, but he had no idea how to conduct relations with Lafcadio. The young man’s hackles rose immediately.
‘Monsieur, I must warn you before we go any further that I loathe gratitude as much as I hate obligations, and that whatever you may do for me you’ll never manage to make me feel beholden to you.’
It was Julius’s turn to feel ruffled.
‘I’m not trying to buy you, Monsieur Wluiki,’ he began huffily … Then, realising they would walk out on each other if they carried on like this, they both stopped dead and after a moment of silence Lafcadio started again in a more conciliatory voice.
‘What exactly is the work you wanted to entrust me with?’
Julius was evasive, pretending that the text was not yet completed to his satisfaction. However, it could be no bad thing for them to get to know each other better beforehand.
‘Admit, Monsieur,’ Lafcadio said lightly, ‘that that was not why you were waiting for me yesterday, and that you were much more interested in looking at a certain notebook …’
Julius was out of his depth now. He answered confusedly, ‘I admit I was,’ and then, with more dignity, ‘I beg your pardon. If the situation could be revisited, I would not do it a second time.’
‘There won’t be a second time: I’ve burnt the notebook.’
Julius looked crestfallen.
‘Are you very angry?’
‘If I were still angry, I wouldn’t be talking to you about it. Forgive my tone of voice just now as I came in,’ Lafcadio went on, determined to press his point home. ‘Even so, I should like to know if you also read a scrap of a letter that was in the notebook?’
Julius had not read any scrap of a letter, for the reason that he had not found any, but seized the opportunity to protest his innocence. His protestations amused Lafcadio, who enjoyed showing his amusement.
‘As it happens, I got my own back a bit by reading your new novel.’
‘Not really your kind of thing, I shouldn’t have thought,’ Julius said quickly.
‘Don’t worry, I didn’t read it all. I have to tell you that I’m not terribly interested in reading. The only book I’ve really enjoyed was Robinson Crusoe … Oh yes, there was Aladdin too … I expect that disqualifies me utterly in your eyes.’
Julius gently put up his hand.
‘I merely feel sorry for you: you’re depriving yourself of great pleasures.’
‘I’ve got plenty of others.’
‘Perhaps not of such good quality.’
‘Oh, I’m sure you’re right!’ Lafcadio laughed, his rudeness barely restrained.
‘And one day you’ll suffer the consequences,’ Julius retorted, mildly put out by the turn the conversation was taking.
‘By then it’ll be too late,’ Lafcadio finished sententiously, then abruptly changed his tone. ‘Do you really like it? Writing, I mean?’
Julius almost stood to attention at this.
‘I don’t write to enjoy myself,’ he said nobly. ‘The pleasures I take in writing are on a higher plane than those I take in living. Although one does not exclude the other.’
‘So people say.’ Raising his voice sharply, after letting it drop apparently unintentionally, Lafcadio said, ‘You know what spoils writing for me? All the corrections, the crossings out, the improvements you do.’
‘Do you think you don’t correct yourself, in life?’ Julius asked, his eyes lighting up.
‘You’re missing the point. In life you correct yourself, so they say, you improve yourself. But you can’t correct what you’ve done. It’s the right to retouch everything that makes writing such a grey business and such …’ He did not finish. ‘Yes. It’s that that seems so brilliant about life to me: you have to paint it as it happens. You’re not allowed to go back and paint over it.’
‘Is there much to paint over in your life?’
‘No … not too much yet … And as you can’t …’ Lafcadio was silent for a moment, then said, ‘Even so, it was because I wanted to paint over it that I threw my notebook on the fire! … But too late, you see … Anyway, go on, admit that you didn’t understand much of what you read.’
But Julius would not admit it.
‘Will you allow me to ask you a few questions?’ he said, changing the subject.
Lafcadio got to his feet so brusquely that Julius thought he was about to walk out, but instead he went over to the window and lifted the muslin curtain.
‘Is that your garden?’
‘No,’ Julius said.
‘Monsieur, up to now I have not allowed anyone to poke their nose into my life to the smallest degree,’ Lafcadio went on, without turning round. Then, coming back to Julius, who was beginning to think he was hardly more than a boy: ‘But today’s a holiday. For once in my life, I’m going to give myself a day off. Ask your questions: I guarantee to answer all of them … Ah! The first thing to tell you is that I’ve kicked out that girl who let you into my room yesterday.’
Julius felt he should put on a show of concern.
‘Because of me! Believe me—’
‘Oh, don’t worry! I’d been trying to find a way to get rid of her for a while.’
‘Were you … er … living with her?’ Julius asked gauchely.
‘Yes, for the sake of my health … But as little as possible, and mainly in memory of a friend who was her lover before.’
‘Was that Monsieur Protos?’ Julius guessed, having firmly decided to swallow his indignation, his disgust, his reproofs, and only to show, on this first day, as much of his astonishment as was necessary to enliven his side of the conversation.
‘Yes, it was,’ Lafcadio answered, laughing. ‘Would you like to know who Protos is?’
‘Getting to know your friends a little might tell me something more about you.’
‘He was an Italian by the name of … God, I’ve forgotten, and it’s not important. His friends and even the masters at school never called him anything except Protos from the day he came first in Greek composition, out of the blue.’
‘I can’t remember ever coming first myself,’ Julius said to encourage the flow of confidences, ‘but I liked being around the ones who came first too. So Protos—’
‘Oh, he did it for a bet. Before that he’d always been one of the last in the class, despite being one of the oldest, while I was one of the youngest, not that that made me work any harder. Protos was terrifically scornful of what our masters taught us, and then one day, after one of our class swots – a boy he loathed – had told him that it was all very easy to despise the things you’re no good at – or something along those lines, I don’t know what – Protos took offence, studied like mad for a fortnight, and did so well that in the next composition he came first – higher than the other boy – to everyone’s complete amazement. Or rather, to everyone else’s, since I already held him in too high a regard for it to surprise me much. He had said to me, “I’ll show them it’s not that hard,” and I believed him.’
‘It sounds as though Protos influenced you a fair amount. Am I right?’
‘Perhaps. He impressed me. To tell the truth, I’ve only ever had one personal conversation with him, but I was so persuaded by what he said that the next day I ran away from school, where I was shrivelling up like a lettuce under a cloth, and walked all the way back to Baden – that was where my mother was living then with my uncle, the Marquis de Gesvres … But we’re starting at the end. I have the feeling you’d make a very bad interrogator.
‘I have an idea. Let me tell you my life story, from the beginning. That way you’ll learn much more than you would if you stuck to your questions – and perhaps more than you care to … No thanks, I prefer mine,’ he said, taking out his cigarette case and throwing away the cigarette Julius had given him as he arrived and which he had allowed to go out while he was talking.