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Saint-Antoine, dead of the typhoid when she was too young to remember him. Like everyone else in the house, she suffers from dreams.
     
    Dusk gives way to the first of the night. Madame Monnard lights more candles. She pokes the fire, carefully. They burn wood, and wood is expensive. A little log no longer or thicker than a man’s arm costs twelve sous and one needs twenty such to keep a fire burning all day. She sits, picks up the edition of the Journal des Dames Modernes she and Ziguette were so entertained by yesterday and turns again to the illustration of the savages, noble savages – great lords in their own savage kingdoms – whose faces were fantastically printed from chin to eyes with blue tattoos, swirls and spirals like plans for formal gardens. Just imagine if their lodger should arrive with such a face! What a coup! Better even than the pianoforte (and what a triumph that had been, the instrument raised up on a pulley like a cow being rescued from a quarry, then swung through the window, half the neighbourhood looking on). A pity it cannot be kept in tune. It drove Ziguette’s poor tutor almost to tears, though it must be admitted Signor Bancolari was the sort of gentleman never far from tears.
    On the floor below, the street door thuds. A draught, finding its way up the stairs, ripples the candle flames in the drawing room and a few moments later Monsieur Monnard appears. He is still wearing his leather apron from the shop, the leather dark with use, with age, though why it should be necessary for him to wear an apron at all given that he has no fewer than three perfectly competent apprentices to do all the polishing and sharpening is quite beyond Madame Monnard’s understanding, quite beyond. Her husband, however, must be master in his own house.
    They greet each other. He greets his daughter, who is now at the piano stool picking out notes that may or may not be part of some melody she knows. He takes off his wig and scratches hard at his scalp.
    ‘Still no sign of our guest?’ he asks.
    ‘Ziguette,’ says Madame Monnard, ‘has been saying the most ridiculous things about him. She thinks that because he is from Normandy, he will not speak French.’
    ‘In Brittany,’ says Monsieur Monnard, ‘they speak something quite impenetrable. It’s thought they learnt it from the gulls.’
    ‘Why is he coming, anyway?’ asks Ziguette. ‘Wasn’t he content at home?’
    ‘I assume,’ says her father, ‘that he intends to make his fortune. Isn’t it why anyone comes to Paris?’
    Marie asks if she should bring in the soup. Monsieur wishes to know what kind of soup they have today.
    ‘Bones,’ says Marie.
    ‘She means from Tuesday’s veal,’ says Madame Monnard. ‘To which we have added any number of pleasant things.’
    ‘Like pig’s feet,’ says Ziguette, which sends her mother into trills of delighted laughter.

5
    He arrives between the soup and the serving of a little stew, also made with the remains of Tuesday’s veal. He had not intended to arrive so late, nor in darkness. His luggage, a large, ribbed trunk (one rib cracked when it was unloaded from the top of the coach), is carried between himself and an enormous mute boy, some relation of the people he lodged with last night by the coaching offices.
    ‘We were afraid you had become lost!’ calls Monsieur Monnard, affably, from the top of the first flight of stairs. ‘Lost entirely.’
    ‘I was at Versailles, monsieur, and then the horse was lame . . .’
    ‘Versailles!’ echoes Monsieur Monnard, watching the young man ascend towards him, then ushering him into the half-warmth of the upstairs room. ‘Monsieur Babette has been at Versailles today.’
    ‘Baratte, monsieur.’
    ‘Eh?’
    ‘I am Baratte. My name, monsieur. Baratte.’
    He is given a place opposite Ziguette. There is some debate as to whether the stew should go back to the kitchen while the new arrival has his soup. Will the soup be hot enough? Does Monsieur