On his knees and with head bowed, he waited for the Count’s answer. Grandsailles cautiously took a little sip of chocolate. Then in a blasé and inflexible tone of voice he said, ‘Get up! I grant nothing by such means. Your supplications embarrass me. You’re not a rag, you have backbone, and if I sent for you it was with a view to loyal collaboration. I regret to have to tell you that I need you just at the moment when you find yourself in this posture.’

  Broussillon, stupefied, got to his feet.

  ‘France’s situation has become aggravated,’ the Count went on, in the same tone in which he had spoken these same words to Fouseret that morning. Then he exclaimed, ‘The hours are pressing and are becoming those of action! Yes! A hundred times, yes! Now I no longer shrink before the word “sabotage” which aroused my indignation and which caused our falling-out.’ As he said these words he held out his hand to Broussillon, who seized it with a sincere and deep emotion, and just barely repressed an impulse to throw himself once more on his knees at the Count’s feet.

  ‘Let us speak quickly now. I have only fifteen minutes to give you,’ said Grandsailles. Without sitting down, to avoid Broussillon’s doing so, and in order to keep any sense of intimacy out of their conversation, which he immediately brought round to the strict terms of transactions, he continued, ‘Today you need have no fear of asking me for what you hinted at in our last interview. It is granted in advance. In exchange all I want is an Arab revolt within forty-eight hours.’

  ‘You shall have your Arab revolt,’ said Broussillon simply, ‘but it may cost the lives of several communists here, therefore I shall have to ask you for the name of some person in France who will answer for your word in all circumstances and to the last consequences.’

  Grandsailles instantly thought of Pierre Girardin, but hesitated a few seconds. He knew that this Broussillon who just now had grovelled before him to implore pity for two lives was explicitly demanding a life in token of his good faith. The Arab revolt was too dear: he loved Girardin too much!

  ‘Tell me first something about this. I do have in France devoted people who are willing to give their lives to obey my orders, but not slaves whom I could hand over to communist reprisals in case the mission with which they were entrusted should fail, or even if they should commit serious errors in carrying it out. You will have to accept without question the honourableness of the person I name.’

  ‘That’s understood,’ answered Broussillon a little reluctantly, and added, ‘You know about the vast plan for the industrialization of Libreux, which was put into execution immediately after the government had decided on the decentralization of the war industries?’

  ‘I have been indirectly informed of this matter, though I have not actually gone back to my Libreux properties since the beginning of the war,’ said Grandsailles, ‘but I have followed all this via London, for it was the British who developed all those industrialization plans.’

  ‘We need those plans!’ said Broussillon. ‘If we could successfully blow up the three inner dams on which all the electric power depends, we would have performed an act of historic sabotage.’

  There was a long silence. ‘Historic sabotage!’ the Count thought to himself, ‘what a degradation of a whole epoch!’ The word ‘sabotage’ appeared to him almost as ugly and repulsive as the word ‘broadcast’, which he detested most of all those that had sprung up in the modern epoch. But suddenly this odious word, now destined to cleanse his beloved plain of the mechanical vermin of industrialization, sounded in his vindictive ears as a clarion-call of redemption. For the height of dishonour was that this vermin of progress now flourished in the hands of the invader. Sabotage! He visualized all the conglomerate ignoble matter of the five factories – cement, rubber, tripes of cables, skeletons of rails, whirls of wheels and constipations of cast-iron blown up in the flash of a single dynamite explosion. Sabotage! And at last the myrtles and honeysuckle might grow again on the spot where they had bloomed for three thousand years, healing over the scars in the mutilated earth with their perennial greenness. Sabotage! And the snails might again slowly glide over the backs of the same stones, that had remained in the same place since the period of the Romans!

  Girardin now appeared to him as the man chosen by destiny, for not only did he possess all the necessary information but also, in obedience to his orders, he had succeeded in hiding in the Count’s family vault the copies and duplicates of the plans for the industrialization of Libreux when the Germans had ordered all existing documents on this subject to be handed over to the occupation authorities on pain of death. Thus it was his notary, Pierre Girardin, one of the most traditionally conservative spirits of France, who was designated to carry out one of the most sensational acts of sabotage in this period of heroic resistance against the invader which was already beginning obscurely to germinate.

  ‘I know the person who has a copy of all those plans in his possession,’ said the Count at last, emerging from his meditation, ‘and this person will deliver them according to my instructions. No!’ cried Grandsailles, anticipating the request Broussillon was about to make, ‘we shall speak again of your sabotage on my return from Malta. By then I expect the Arab revolt which you promised me to have shed all its blood, including the repression. As for me, I want no traces to remain. You have ten days in all!’

  When Broussillon had left, Grandsailles remained for a moment leaning against the bulkhead, reviewing in his mind the results of the day’s activities. He had just been handed a message from the Prince of Orminy in which the latter gave a detailed account of the day’s progress, except in the matter of the piloting of the plane to Malta. For his part the Count had fully succeeded in his dark aims, and now felt that Fouseret and Broussillon were irrevocably committed to his hazardous plan. They had been so weak that they fully deserved, if need be, to be destroyed, sacrificed by ‘all that’. Then he thought tenderly of Girardin. He saw him standing, at a great distance, in the courtyard of the Château de Lamotte, his bald head shining in the sun like a billiard ball. But it was tiny, the size of a vitamin-pill, like one of those melancholy pictures that one sees by looking through the wrong end of opera glasses…. ‘I wouldn’t want the Germans to shoot him for anything in the world,’ he said to himself with a sigh. Then he visualized, like rows of Christ-figures in polished ivory, the decayed and uneven teeth of the Prince of Orminy whom he had so mistreated the previous evening – now unconditionally devoted to him.

  Grandsailles tried to sum up his combined visions in a general feeling of pity, but failing to exalt his spirit in this way he felt instead an irrepressible thrill of joy run through his body and, reflecting pessimistically that man’s love of power is limitless, he realized that he was hungry as a wolf. He had himself rowed ashore to go and dine in the company of Cécile Goudreau and the Prince of Orminy. Cécile Goudreau immediately struck him as reticent, and he was confirmed in his suspicion that she was upset by the tone in which she said, ‘We can sit down to dinner. D’Orminy is not joining us.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ asked Grandsailles.

  ‘He has been working for you the whole blessed day. He is worn out…. But the worst of it is that he has also made his last flight: he has definitely been forbidden to fly…. You understand,’ Goudreau went on, trying to soften her severe, almost spiteful tone by blending a little humour with it, ‘you understand, the kind of life d’Orminy has always led, all his excesses – and especially his fondness for sport – there is nothing worse for the health. Polo, aviation, all those things are bound to ruin the constitution in the long run and affect the heart. Fortunately opium has helped to preserve him! He has had a kind of attack.’

  ‘Idiot,’ growled Grandsailles, who was no longer listening to Goudreau and was on the point of exploding. ‘Who made him fly today? He knew well enough that I need him just now, every second, that my mission to Malta depends to a large extent on his activity!’

  ‘Well, my dear,’ Goudreau broke out full of indignation, crumpling her napkin and neglecting to eat, ‘it’s precisely for you that he flew, and he has just suffered the greatest disappointment in his life, for he had his heart set on piloting the plane that was to take you to Malta!’ Goudreau looked Grandsailles straight in the eye. ‘The war is making you terribly blind and ungrateful to those who are devoted to you,’ she said in a tone of bitter reproach. ‘You’ll see, you’ll see – you’ll realize it when we have gone.’

  ‘You’re leaving with d’Orminy for America? That’s it, isn’t it? Why did you hide it from me? I should have guessed it!’ said Grandsailles. He did not frown and his voice had become indulgent, tinged with a melancholy contempt.

  ‘Yes, my dear, d’Orminy is taking me with him to America in nine days. We are not people of action, and we would rather live in a friendly country than under a regime that becomes more like the invader’s every day and where even conspiracy rubs elbows with treason and often becomes indistiguishable from it. What they have just done against the Jews is unspeakable! So you will be able to stay here, surrounded solely by your enemies, and expend on them all your gratifying precautions and your psychological subtleties!’

  Grandsailles, who had rapidly devoured a broiled lobster, rose coldly from the table without waiting for Cécile Goudreau to finish and, considering his meal ended, was preparing to leave. ‘I apologize,’ he said, ‘for leaving in this way, and I’m sorry you saw fit to start this unpleasantness, the first we have had.’

  Cécile Goudreau in turn got up from the table. ‘It’s not for my own sake,’ she said furiously, ‘that I started this unpleasantness, it’s because of the Prince. I know he’s weak, and he is wrong not to rap the fingers of your despotism instead of staying upstairs weeping. But you’ve been merciless to him, and the way you have humiliated him is inhuman. Did you imagine the cruelty you showed him yesterday afternoon would be a treat to my cynicism?’

  ‘Why did he have to come and cry to you about it?’ Grandsailles asked, with a condescending sigh.

  ‘He didn’t cry yesterday, my dear, when you insulted him. That’s what you would have liked. He is crying now that he knows he can’t be of service to you! And he hasn’t told me a thing, do you understand? He only said to me – and with what dignity – “Grandsailles just sent me away and told me that he won’t be at all sorry the day I die, that my breath stinks, and that when I do die he won’t have to listen to my foul secrets any longer!” And he just stood there without adding a single comment, up to the moment when you sent for him.’

  ‘Let’s forget that,’ said Grandsailles after a brief silence; then in a tone of great gentleness, and holding out his hand, ‘Come here, kiss this despot’s fingers!’

  Cécile Goudreau went up to him and Grandsailles kissed her demonstratively on the forehead. ‘I am going with you to America. This was a part of my plans. But before this I must at all costs succeed in my Malta venture…. It’s not my cruelty, it’s Malta that cries out within me! If you knew how important this is for France!’

  In his nervousness the Count put his hand to his hair to smooth down some strands that had been slightly mussed as he embraced Cécile Goudreau.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘you’ll have your comb. We found it and had it brought to your canoness. And you’ll also have Malta. Once more, your Cécile is going to arrange things for you. I have to hurry. In an hour I have an appointment with a hero; that’s just what you need at this moment, your gold comb and a man who, without knowing you, is willing to risk his life for you.’

  ‘You’re both admirable and terrifying, to know me as well as you do,’ said Grandsailles.

  ‘Did you ever hear of the American aviator nicknamed “Baba” in Paris?’ asked Cécile.

  ‘Baba,’ said Grandsailles, exploring his memory, ‘… no.’

  ‘Well, he is the one I have to convince, and get him to say yes this very evening,’ said Cécile, winding a native turban round her head.

  ‘I think I remember now.’ said Grandsailles. ‘There was a lot of talk about a helmet he had to wear for more than a year to reset his skull. Is he really well again?’

  ‘Completely,’ said Goudreau. ‘The last time I saw him without his helmet, at Madame Ménard d’Orient’s, just before coming here, you could hardly see any traces of his accident. Don’t worry, he’s the man for you.’

  Thus Cécile Goudreau came to play an important rôle in this shady and dramatic conspiracy of Malta, by finding the exceptional being who would lend himself to this adventure and bring the Count of Grandsailles to the island. Baba, who knew the latter by his dazzling reputation as a social figure, was immediately flattered by the Count’s choice. Besides which Cécile Goudreau’s direct, acid and violent mind was one to fascinate and convince him.

  ‘Listen to me, my child,’ said Cécile to Baba, ‘it’s the combination of people like the Count of Grandsailles and you that will win us this war in the end. You know it better than I do. No matter how much of your merchandise of bombs you dump out it won’t make much difference: you make a breach in the balcony of a failing bank, a rear balcony that nobody used.’

  ‘Sometimes one does more than that,’ said Baba, ‘a few hundreds of thousands of balconies blown to bits!’

  ‘Well, yes, chéri, but there are so many, many balconies, too many in the cities, that no one ever thinks of using,’ Cécile exclaimed wearily, as if feeling suddenly oppressed by the weight of all the superfluous and useless balconies in the world.

  ‘Sometimes it isn’t only balconies, but factory chimneys that we smash.’

  ‘Well, yes, my child,’ she answered, conceding the point with condescension, ‘but in our day this chimney that you blow up into a thousand pieces is rebuilt as quickly as though the film of your destruction were being run in reverse. Everything grows back again, each time more ugly than the last – that’s undeniable – but each time also more efficient and modern and better adapted to war. On the other hand, flying over Malta and silently landing the Count of Grandsailles there seems like nothing. But you see, for the English especially he is a mystery – crafty as a Libreux peasant, with a sense of honour pushed to the extreme, as in a Spaniard. He fascinates people who, won over to his cause and prepared to join him in action, will enable him to sow in every French heart the ancestral germs of the forces of resistance which must in the end bring about the country’s liberation. And the seed of Grandsailles is the very seed which produced the noblest and oldest oak-trees on earth….

  ‘One forgets the oak-trees,’ she went on, half-closing her eyes and looking dreamily into the distance. ‘At the height of the growing season, looking out over the fields, one is startled to watch the rapid growth, week by week, of certain plants that seem to leap right out of the earth with an expansive, luxuriant, Bacchic, imperialist vigour, that can neither be arrested nor controlled, peculiar to the “blitzkrieg” harvests of the bean family. While the growth is in full swing it absorbs and obliterates everything – that is Hitlerism, Germany, a biological, frenzied sprouting of beans and peas! One forgets the oak-trees. But suddenly one fine day that same triumphantly erect stalk that supported the beans begins to look forlorn, the bean hangs its head, the season is over and in a few days there remain only brown and wilted plant vestiges on the field that but a short time ago was dazzling green. Then one notices that during all this time some oak seedlings have taken root among them and one lifts one’s eyes to look once more at the venerable shapes of those that have seen these agitations and calms follow one another for two thousand years. The oaks are France. Roots also tear down walls in the end. You, I know, still feel yourself attracted to what appears new and stirring.’

  ‘No,’ said Baba, ‘I too believe once more in the ineradicable forces of tradition and aristocracy, and today I feel my revolutionary illusions of the Spanish war days like a distant germination that has already been harvested in my life. A fresh craving for contours and solidity begins to possess us, and when I fly it is no longer, as before, the proud revolt of the archangels who are out to win a chimerical paradise. On the contrary, I am urged by a desire to reconquer the earth, the earth, in its hardness, its nobility… renunciation… to recover the dignity of bare feet resting on the ground. I know now that man must look at heaven with humility. You see, this war is making me a Catholic.’

  Cécile Goudreau listened to Baba with pride, admiration, and as if just discovering with astonishment that besides being a hero he was intelligent and even capable of expressing himself.

  ‘Why, my dear, handsome Baba!’ she said to him, running her fingers through his hair.

  ‘Don’t call me “Baba” any more,’ he said. ‘I’m no longer the same man that I was in Spain or in Paris. Here I am only known by my real name, John Randolph, Lieutenant Randolph, and it isn’t Baba who will take the Count of Grandsailles to Malta, it’s me, Lieutenant Randolph.’

  ‘I knew you would take him. That’s wonderful!’

  There was a long silence. Cécile Goudreau kissed Randolph’s hand. ‘I can take him there, but that’s all,’ the latter continued. ‘I can’t bring him back. I’ve obtained permission to make this flight provided I fly from there straight to Italy, where I have to drop two parachutists in Calabria…. And you see, Baba would never have been afraid of that, but I am. It’s the first time I am afraid of an assignment. Italy has always brought me bad luck. I was once at death’s door in Naples, with typhus – and worse things: my dog run over on the road to Venice…. In Venice, too, I had a fight with one of my best childhood friends….’