THE MOUTH OF the ink bottle still gleams wetly, but once the moaning begins, Charlotte shudders and finds that she can write no further.
Poor M. Pujol, she sighs.
Madeleine nods solemnly. The flatulent man, pale and elegant and tall, suffers from bad dreams, owing to the sordid company he kept during his reign in Paris.
A modest and elegant man, he never speaks of his former brilliance, but once, when Madeleine was practicing her contortions, he gently unfolded her and grasped her paddle in one of his warm hands. Behind the nearest caravan, he bowed slightly, lifted the tails of his well-cut coat and produced the most melancholy sounds she had ever heard: that of the nightingale, the grasshopper, the cuckoo. And though Madeleine was a child who rarely cried, the strange and unearthly emissions reminded her of her home, and she wept.
Charlotte, too, is crying. She hears in the nightmare moans of M. Pujol a voice that she misses.