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where my work takes me.’
    ‘Very manly,’ says Madame Monnard, probing the cat’s fur.
    ‘And what is your work here?’ asks Ziguette. She looks so pretty when she asks this, so pert in her creamy gown, he is tempted to tell her exactly what he has come to do. He wonders what Lafosse has said, what story, if any, he has told them.
    ‘I am here,’ he says, aware that all three are suddenly listening to him intently, ‘to make a survey of les Innocents.’
    ‘Les Innocents?’ repeats Madame Monnard, after a pause during which nothing could be heard except the purring of the cat, the crackle of the fire.
    ‘I am an engineer,’ he says. ‘You were not told?’
    ‘Who would tell us?’ asks Monsieur Monnard.
    ‘The same as made the arrangement for my lodging here.’
    ‘We were informed of nothing but that a gentleman from Normandy would have need of a room.’
    ‘With meals,’ adds his wife.
    ‘Indeed,’ confirms Monsieur Monnard. ‘A morning and an evening meal.’
    Ziguette says, ‘We had a musician stay with us once.’
    ‘A rather particular gentleman,’ says Monsieur Monnard.
    ‘With red hair,’ says Madame.
    Ziguette opens her mouth as though to add something; then, after a beat, a quarter-note of hesitation, she closes it again.
    ‘Yours,’ says Madame, smiling complacently, ‘is a very practical vocation. One must congratulate you.’
    ‘My teacher,’ says Jean-Baptiste, ‘at the Ecole des Ponts, was Maître Perronet. He is the greatest engineer in France.’
    Above the cat’s head, Madame Monnard applauds him with her fingertips.
    ‘And did you ever build a bridge?’ asks Ziguette.
    ‘One. In Normandy.’
    ‘And what did it cross?’
    ‘The corner of a lake.’
    ‘One does not think of lakes having corners,’ says Ziguette.
    ‘You had better tell Marie, monsieur,’ says Madame Monnard, ‘if you prefer coffee in the morning or chocolate.’
    ‘The musician liked chocolate,’ says Ziguette.
    ‘Marie will bring it to your room if you wish it,’ says Madame. ‘And water for your toilette. You have only to name the hour.’
    ‘He has not seen his room yet,’ says Ziguette.
    ‘No, indeed,’ says her mother. ‘I believe he has not.’
    ‘Then I shall help you up the stairs with your trunk,’ says Monsieur Monnard, rising. ‘It will be too heavy, even for Marie.’
     
    The room is at the back of the house, the floor below the attic. The two men, puffing a little, carry the trunk up the four flights of stairs from the hallway. Marie goes ahead of them with a candle.
    ‘I think you’ll have everything you need up here,’ says Monsieur Monnard.
    ‘Yes,’ says Jean-Baptiste, looking from the narrow bed to the table and chair, the tripod stand with its glazed tin bowl, the narrow fireplace, the shuttered window above the bed.
    ‘Ziguette has her room across the corridor. Madame Monnard and I sleep in the room below. Marie, of course, is in the attic. Your predecessor was in the habit of asking her to remove her sabots when she was above him. An acute sensitivity to noise.’
    ‘You wish me, monsieur, to pay the rent in advance?’
    ‘Very businesslike of you. I admire that in a young fellow. Now then, let us see. Six livres a week, I think. Candles and firewood not included.’
    Jean-Baptiste, turning his back a little on the master of the house, shakes a few coins from the purse onto the table, picks out a half-louis. ‘For two weeks,’ he says.
    Monsieur Monnard accepts the coin, pinches it and tucks it into a pocket of his waistcoat. ‘You are welcome here,’ he says, his expression that of a man who has just sold a rack of good knives to a priest. ‘Be sure to tell Marie all your needs.’
    For a second or two the lodger and the servant lock eyes; then she lights the candle stub on the table with the candle she has carried upstairs.
    ‘If you bring your candle down in the morning,’ she says, ‘you may leave it on the shelf by the street door. There’s