night, the whole capital burnt down. Salah el Mahdi, having regained his throne but without a palace, decided to live in the mountains with the warriors who had given him back his kingdom. He built himself a fortress and entrusted the country’s administration to my ancestor, whom he made a prince so that the word “vizir” would never again be heard in the country. There you are, Jean Arnaud. That’s how you become a prince.’
‘Goodness, it’s not easy!’
‘No, you’re right about that, and one must also admit that there are fewer opportunities today than there once were to become a prince.’
‘Yes, that’s sad!’ Jean said, thinking of Chantal de Malemort, who would not hesitate to marry him if he suddenly became a prince.
There was a tap at the glass, misted by the rain, and Jean made out the blurred face of the chauffeur, who was laughing. His passenger wound down the window, and the black man took off his cap.
‘Monseigneur, the mechanic is here. He is completing the job. We’ll be able to get on our way.’
The window rose again.
‘This is thanks to you, Jean. I’m very grateful to you.’
He unbuttoned his overcoat and took out a wallet, from which he withdrew two thousand-franc notes.
‘I hope that you have a money box.’
‘Yes.’
‘Then put these two notes in it, and write your name and address in my notebook. I’ll send you a souvenir when I remember.’
‘I can’t accept them. What will my father say?’
‘He won’t say anything.’
‘He’ll never believe I met a prince at the side of the road. Things like that don’t happen.’
‘Sometimes the most unlikely things are the most easily believed.’
He slid the notes into Jean’s cape pocket. ‘
There you are, it’s done. Let’s say no more about it. Goodbye, Jean.’
He seemed very tired, ready to close his eyes and go to sleep. The mechanic was tightening the bolts of the spare wheel with a few last turns while the chauffeur watched him with a superior expression. Jean picked up his bicycle and climbed the rest of the way up the hill as fast as he could, though not fast enough to stay ahead of the Hispano-Suiza, which caught up and then overtook him. To his great surprise, he found it stopped again outside the gates of La Sauveté. The chauffeur waited by the passenger door, umbrella in hand. A young woman in a fur coat dashed out of the house and through the rain and threw herself into the car, which drove away immediately.
‘You took your time!’ Jeanne said when he came in, having shaken out his cape in the hall. ‘It’s too bad that you missed Mademoiselle Geneviève. I told her about you, and she very much wanted to meet you.’
‘Was it her who was leaving as I arrived?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, I talked to her husband.’
‘Her husband?’ Jeanne said.
‘Yes, the monseigneur.’
‘What are you talking about? She hasn’t married a bishop.’
‘No, another monseigneur. A real one. A prince. He gave me this!’
He took one of the thousand-franc notes out of his pocket, a reflex that he only understood later holding him back from producing both.
‘A thousand francs!’ Jeanne cried. ‘But he’s completely mad!’
‘I lent him my bike.’
‘You lent your bicycle to a prince?’
‘No. To his chauffeur, a black man in a blue tunic.’
‘I don’t understand a word you’re saying.’
He had to explain from the beginning, and then explain a second time to Albert, who to Jean’s astonishment decided that the thousand-franc note was proper treasure trove and pushed it into Jean’s money box. Yes, Geneviève had been there that afternoon. She had come directly to the lodge to kiss Jeanne, before going across to La Sauveté to see her parents and her brother and sister.
‘She hasn’t changed, our little one,’ said Jeanne, trying as she invariably did to link the fearful present to a reassuring past where everything had been kindly and good.
‘What are you talking about? She’s twelve years older and looks it!’ Albert said, turned as ever towards the future.
‘I mean that her heart’s still in the right place. She gave me a stole and a bag which will be just right for mass on Sunday.’
After dinner Madame du Courseau appeared, and Jean was sent to bed. Grumbling, he went upstairs, leaving his bedroom door slightly open. He could not hear everything, but he realised that Marie-Thérèse had come to find out whether Geneviève had unburdened herself to Jeanne any more than to herself. Jeanne was stony in her replies, answering in monosyllables until the conversation was interrupted by the familiar rumble of the Bugatti being driven out of its garage. This one was a Type 47, the largest cubic capacity ever produced by Ettore Bugatti, a 5.35-litre engine that effortlessly accelerated to 150 kilometres an hour.
‘It really is far too late to be going out for a drive,’ Madame du Courseau said in an offended voice.
Antoine had been left feeling confined and stifled by the emotions that Geneviève’s visit had aroused. For several days he had wanted to try out the new car, delivered three months earlier from the Molsheim workshops, over a proper distance, but as it was late he switched his itinerary and took the road for Paris, where, arriving shortly after midnight, he stopped for a demi and a ham sandwich at a café at the Porte Maillot. Not having been to Paris since 1917, he found the city changed. He remembered black streets and empty boulevards, in which glimmers of blue light escaped from behind blinds placed over windows: a city of often beautiful women, of whom he had been instinctively suspicious. Now he wandered in search of memories and found none, and as in such circumstances we generally find what we would like not to, on Place de l’Étoile he overtook a yellow Hispano-Suiza driven by a black chauffeur. He let it pass him and followed it to a side road off the Avenue du Bois, where it stopped outside an hôtel particulier. The chauffeur opened the door. Geneviève stepped out first, waiting for the prince, tall and slightly stooped, to follow and take her arm. Antoine accelerated past them so that he would not be recognised.
It was two o’clock by now, and the only life to be found was at Place Pigalle, Montmartre, where he abandoned the car and walked. Because the girls who began to accost him bored and repelled him, he pretended to be part of a group that had just alighted from a bus and were hastening towards a nightclub whose entrance was in the shape of an enormous red devil’s mouth. English was being spoken around him, then German, as a trilingual guide steered the group, sat it down at small tables and clapped his hands to call the waiters, who arrived with demi-sec sparkling wine in champagne flutes. Antoine found himself sitting between an American woman and a German, facing a nondescript individual who laughed for no reason and who, for as long as the show (pretty bare-breasted girls playing with snakes) lasted, kept his hand in his trouser pocket and did rather unspeakable things, apparently without conclusive result. Scarcely had the show finished than the guide collected up his herd and stuffed them back into their bus. Antoine followed. At this late hour no one was counting the tourists in search of the legendary Paris by night, and in any case it was highly likely that some had been mislaid en route, either too drunk to go on or spirited away by some hungry seductress. The bus drove on to Bastille, from where the passengers had a brisk walk to a dance hall on Rue de Lappe. At the tourists’ arrival the band struck up. Bad boys in shiny black shirts and striped trousers danced a rakish waltz with molls in plunging necklines. Antoine found himself with a Swedish couple, who were beside themselves with pleasure. They asked him where he was from, and when they discovered they were talking to