The women especially appeared really overwhelmed by what had happened, for to the forty killed and several hundred wounded was added the blatant and romantic truculence of the organizations involved. The Croix de Feu, the communists, the Cagoulards, the Acacia conspirators, the Camelots du Roi were such melodramatic names that by themselves alone they were enough to bring goose-flesh to the most delicate skins exposed above the low-necked dresses. The Count of Grandsailles observed all his friends, among whom there were in fact Croix de Feu, Cagoulards, Acacia conspirators, King’s Henchmen, members of the resigned cabinet, even communists, and with the indulgence which his vivid love of literature rendered just a little perverse he imperceptibly winked his eyes and, taking in the motley collection of his guests, decided that his salon was ‘quite impressive’.

  A little overwhelmed by so much sudden actuality, he ceased to pay attention to his friends’ narrative avalanche, and with his back lightly resting against the marble of the fireplace, the Count began to see rising before him, as in a cinema montage, the disorderly succession of the most striking images of everything that he had just learned. He saw the setting sun disappear behind the Arc de Triomphe while the Croix de Feu demonstrators came down the Champs Elysées in serried ranks of twelve, with unfurled banners in the lead; saw the motionless, black, expectant barrages of the police ordered to hold them back yield one after another at the last moment, without even appreciably slowing the intrepid march of the demonstrators; now the latter were heading straight towards the Pont de la Concorde, cluttered with army trucks and troops protecting the access to the Chamber of Deputies.

  Suddenly the chief of the municipal police advances a dozen yards to meet the demonstrators. He parleys with the banner-carriers and then the procession, first hesitating, then changing its direction, heads toward the Madeleine and there is a redoubling of the cries. ‘Daladier to the gallows! Daladier to the gallows!’ In a flash the iron castings that form protective gratings round the trees are torn up, violently hurled on the cobble-stones and broken in pieces, which become fearful weapons; with iron bars the gas conduits of the streetlamps are smashed and, as they begin to burn, project furious whistling flames that rise obliquely like long-contained geysers to a height of ten feet toward the sky in which the twilight deepens. Another! Then another! And as if by a destructive contagion bonfires of popular anger form gala festoons, with their fiery plumes, over the seething tide of the crowd. From the sidewalk opposite Maxim’s, rocks are thrown on the Navy Ministry, a leather-gloved hand introduces kerosene-soaked rags through a broken window, a porte cochère opens and the livid face of a vessel-commander appears. ‘I don’t know what you want,’ he says, ‘but I see the tricolor among you and I am sure you will not want to shed the blood of French sailors; Long live the Navy! Long live France!’ And the crowd surges on toward the Madeleine. It now fills the Rue Royale. A chambermaid leaning on a balcony is killed by a stray bullet, and an ample amaranth-coloured dressing-gown that she was holding in her hand drops into the street. Grandsailles sees this sinister piece of fabric flutter over the heads of the crowd, momentarily distracted by such incidents, but immediately caught up again by the unsated frenzy which, like that of rutting dogs, drives it on at a pulsating and uncontrolled pace to pursue the magnetizing and bitter odour of revolt.

  All these visions were beginning to follow one another in Grandsaille’s imagination with an accelerated rhythm, without apparent continuity but with such visual acuteness that the animated spectacle of his drawing-room became an indeterminate background of confused murmurs and movements.

  He sees a great pool of blood from a horse with its belly ripped open, in which the journalist Lytry, enveloped in his invariable yellow raincoat, has just slipped. The flowershop window of the Madeleine (where the Count used to buy his little yellow lilies with amaranth leopard spots which he sometimes had the audacity to pin in his buttonhole) now reflects in the stalactites of its broken glass the burning hulk of an overturned bus on the corner of the Rue Royale. They are unbuttoning the trousers of Monsieur Cordier’s fat chauffeur, whom two friends have just stretched out on a bench; his flesh is very pale, the colour of a fly’s belly, and right beside his navel, ten centimetres away, there is another little hole, without a drop of blood, smaller but darker, just as Monsieur Cordier himself had described it. ‘It looked like two squinting little pig’s eyes.’

  The Prince of Orminy, pale as a corpse, goes in through the service-entrance to the Fouquet bar; he has a fine iron rod, fifteen centimetres long, nailed like a small harpoon just below his nose and so solidly anchored in the bone of his upper jaw that even with the full strength of his two hands he is unable to dislodge it, and he falls unconscious into the arms of the manager, the faithful Dominique, crying. ‘Forgive me….’ Then at nightfall, the cafés on the Place Royale crowded with wounded and the last belated recalcitrants driven back toward the far end of the Champs Elysées, closely pursued by the stray bullets of the Garde Mobile sub-machine guns; the deserted Place de la Concorde, with the dripping indifference of the elegant bronzes of its fountains and the residues of passion – guttered lampposts with their jets of flame unfurled in the starry night in a sheaf of aigrettes.

  Just at this moment Madame de Cléda entered the drawing-room wearing a sheaf of aigrettes in her hair. Grandsailles gave a start on seeing her appear and, as if abruptly awakening from his waking dream, instantly realized that she was in fact the only person he was waiting for. He stepped forward with unhabitual eagerness to receive her and kissed her on the forehead.

  Madame de Cléda, with her sun-tanned complexion, so sculptural and adorned with diamond necklaces and cascades of satin, so completely personified Parisian actuality that it was as if one of the fountains of the Place de la Concorde had just broken into the room.

  Madame de Cléda’s entrance was not quite what the Count would have wished. He was uncompromisingly zealous of the ‘tone’ of his salon, and although this unwonted disorder, with everyone trying to out-talk his fellow, had intrigued him for a moment, now before Madame de Cléda’s somewhat startled and ironic gaze the din became intolerable to him. He immediately assumed an indulgent and slightly acid smile as if to say, ‘Well, children, we have enjoyed ourselves long enough, now we have to put an end to play.’ Burning with a controlled impatience which cast a shadow of concern over his face, Grandsailles discreetly ordered dinner to be served ten minutes ahead of time, thus hoping to re-establish the fluid course of well-ordered conversations, foreseeing that the ceremonious descent down the broad stairway to the dining-room would canalize the impetuous torrent of budding polemics into a calm river of politeness.

  The Count’s dinner, however, only restored the dialectical equilibrium for a very short time, for almost immediately the burning issue of the bloody events of the Sixth of February again rose to the surface of all the conversations. This time they began to slide down the dangerous slope along which one passed imperceptibly from the descriptive phase of the beginning, to the ideological phase, which would inevitably crown the end of this meal – a meal which, if not historic, was at least dramatically symptomatic of this decisive and crucial period of the history of France.

  Madame de Montluçon was seated at Senator Daudier’s right, and at the left of the political commentator, Villers. She was a member of the Croix de Feu because the husband of her lover’s mistress was a communist. She wore a Chanel dress, with a very low neck, edged with roses cut out of three thicknesses of black and beige lace, between which were hidden rather large pearl caterpillars.

  Senator Daudier always stood in opposition to every political opinion with which he was confronted and invariably defended the person criticized by whomever he happened to be talking with, and in the last part of a speech he systematically and intentionally tore down what he had built up in the first, so that while giving the impression that he had very precise opinions on every subject the unvarying result of what he said was a draw. He delivered a dithyrambic encomium on Madame de Montluçon’s dress concluding, as he turned to her, ‘The neck of your dress, Madame, is quite edible, including the roses, but for my own taste I should have preferred to have the caterpillars served in a separate dish, so that one could just help himself.’

  Villers thereupon told about the latest Parisian extravagance – the edible hats exhibited in the surrealist show. Politically, Villers belonged to the Acacia conspirators, for the simple reason that, being a writer, he composed the political speeches of one of the prominent leaders of this faction.

  He spoke fawningly to Madame de Montluçon, trying to interest her in his pseudo-philosophic work on contemporary history. Madame de Montluçon, giving up trying to follow him in his frenzied cavalcade of paradoxes, finally exclaimed, ‘But I really can’t make out which side you are on!’

  ‘Neither can I,’ Villers retorted with a note of melancholy. ‘You see, I am in my way a kind of artist, and my attitude is exactly like that of Leonardo da Vinci, who left his famous equestrian statue unfinished while he waited to see who was going to win. I keep working away on my book and I’m making it a veritable monument; it is grandiose, imposing, finished in its slightest details, but there is no head; I am leaving that till the last moment so that I can give it the head of the conqueror.’

  And as a calf’s head trimmed with laurel leaves was just being served at that moment he added, pointing to a leaf with the tip of his fork. ‘As a matter of fact what really counts, you know, is not so much the head as the laurel.’

  Monsieur Fauceret and Monsieur Ouvrard, since the beginning of the meal, had been carrying on an acrimonious debate on the Paris riots. They were the most antagonistic political adversaries of the moment because, having the same position, the same platform and the same approach to all political questions, they were obliged to perform masterpieces of interpretation in order to give their followers the impression that they were in constant and flagrant disagreement, so as to outdistance each other in the frenzied race of their immediate and daily ambition, which confused their vision and prevented them from seeing their still uncertain goal of power.

  Simone Durny who for some moments had furiously and obstinately been devouring her asparagus to the ends, chewing and rechewing their fibrous residues without knowing what she was eating, finally broke hysterically into the conversations that were going on around her. ‘No, I say, No! I would a thousand times rather see a communist France than a France dominated by the Boches!’

  Monsieur Fauceret looked at her pityingly for a moment, then peering straight into her eyes said with an air of solemnity, and as if trying to remember, ‘Madame… what is your son’s name, now?’

  ‘Jean-Louis,’ Simone answered, her lips trembling with anticipation.

  ‘Well, Madame,’ answered Camille Fauceret gently, ‘with remarks like that you do nothing less than blindly sign your son Jean-Louis’ death warrant!’

  Madame Durny sat as if congealed, her face suddenly motionless, and her eyes slowly filled with large tears: she had just swallowed an asparagus the wrong way.

  Béatrice de Brantès felt some tenderness for radical-socialism because she had an intuition that it was in the untidiness of the trousers, in the stiff collars and the unkempt moustaches of its leaders that the authentic jesting, ribald spirit of France had found refuge.

  She was seated at the right of Monsieur Edouard Cordier, a radical-socialist because he was a Mason, and at the left of the Marquis of Royancourt, a royalist as his very name indicated.

  Béatrice de Brantès, fresh and exuberant, was lightly leaning on Monsieur Cordier’s well-padded shoulder, paying homage to his political affinities by telling him risqué stories; she had so much grace in her diction that she could say anything without losing an iota of her elegance, but contrary to all usage, she would whisper the innocuous passages of her anecdotes and raise her voice just for the most ribald parts, coquettishly trying by this device to attract the attention of the Marquis of Royancourt, whom she felt to be too much absorbed in the general conversation.

  ‘Imagine,’ said Béatrice to Monsieur Cordier, ‘Madame Deschelette, with her Schiaparelli dress and hat – that monumental hat – mounted on top of a taxi to get a better view of everything that was going on, tapping with her feet and alone against the crowd pouring a torrent of violent insults on the demonstrators.’

  And as Monsieur Cordier was listening with great absorption, she went on, ‘Naturally this could last only so long. (She lowered her voice.) A group of the King’s Henchmen seized her by the legs, laid her on the pavement, pulling up her skirts… (raising her voice) and burned her with the tip of a cigarette in one of the most sensitive and delicate parts of her anatomy.’

  ‘The baptism of fire!’ exclaimed Cordier, apoplectic and with eyes sparkling.

  ‘Well, no,’ Béatrice answered with a drawling inflection, feigning innocence. ‘It appears on the contrary that it was the cigarette that was baptized – with water.’

  ‘What water?’ asked Monsieur Cordier in momentary perplexity.

  With a lazily astonished and infinitely voluptuous expression, Béatrice answered between her teeth, almost hissing the words, ‘It wasn’t really water….’ And as some very frothy champagne was just being poured into her glass she added, giving even more emphasis to each syllable, ‘Nor was it exactly champagne.’

  She looked at Monsieur Cordier with such an air of malice that he remained flabbergasted for a moment.

  ‘Yes, I assure you, this incredible story is quite true,’ the Marquis of Royancourt broke in, highly amused, and trying to help out Monsieur Cordier in this moment of embarrassment. ‘It was Madame Deschelette herself who told it to me. You can imagine that having been hemmed in by the crowd for two hours she really needed to go – it couldn’t have happened more opportunely.’

  ‘My dear Marquis,’ said Béatrice, delicately placing her plump hand on his arm, ‘having waited in vain for the homage of your Gallic wit, since you’re submerged in politics, I’m pouring my charms over poor Monsieur Cordier.’

  ‘You won’t be wasting them, my dear,’ the Marquis responded with liveliness. ‘He could tell you some that would make you blush to the tips of your hair, but you have to get him in his own element. As for me, my dear Béatrice, I apologize for not making love to you, but I’m sure you understand, with such events going on….’

  Saying which, he playfully pressed his thigh, hardened by horseback-riding, against Béatrice de Brantès’ soft one, and she accepted the attention with a charming laugh.

  Senator Daudier was creating a sensation at his end of the table by expounding a highly original theory.

  ‘Hitler wants war,’ he said, ‘not in order to win, as most people think, but to lose. He is romantic and an integral masochist, and exactly as in Wagner’s operas it has to end for him, the hero, as tragically as possible. In the depth of his subconscious, the end to which Hitler at heart aspires is to feel his enemy’s boot crushing his face, which for that matter is unmistakably marked by disaster….’ And Daudier concluded, with a note of concern, ‘The trouble is that Hitler is very honest…. He won’t cheat. He is willing to lose, but not to lose on purpose. He insists on playing the game to the end according to the rules, and will give up only when he is beaten. That’s why we shall have so much trouble.’

  The Count of Grandsailles had at his right the Duchess of Saintonges and at his left Madame Cécile Goudreau. Politically the Duchess of Saintonges was rather leftish, while Madame Cécile Goudreau was definitely rightist. With the leftist ideas of his right-hand partner the Count would mildly bring out the rightist ideas of his left-hand partner, and with the rightist ideas of his left-hand partner, he would moderately develop the leftist ideas of his right-hand partner. This was all executed with the exaggerated opportunistic politeness of the subtle game of balance which distinguished not only the Count’s personal attitude, but also that of the great powers in the European situation at this moment.

  Toward the end of the meal the ideological effervescence gathered around the Count de Grandsailles who, resigning himself to listening, had lapsed into silence. With the proselytizing zeal of bellicose charlatans devoid of all conviction, each one brought forward his own political solutions, with which everyone else unanimously disagreed. The Acacia conspirators saw France’s only hope of political health in a Latin bloc, composed of France, Spain and Italy, set off against England and Germany; those who belonged to the Comité France-Allemagne demanded that for once an attempt be made to create a frank and unqualified friendship with the Germans; others wanted an immediate military alliance with Russia, to isolate England and nip the communist organizations of the country in the bud. All these theses were simultaneously investigated in the light of the subtlest legalistic interpretations, to the great delight of Monsieur Ouvrard who kept breaking into the discussions and who observed:

  ‘France’s situation is indeed grave, but one thing is certain: in spite of the political chaos which we are undergoing, our notions of law and order are becoming more refined and specialized day by day. Yes, gentlemen, on this score we continue to lead all other nations and it is impossible not to recognize that the growth of our jurisdictional institutions constitutes the very health of our nation.’

  ‘In short,’ the Duke of Saintonges sighed, remembering Forain’s famous last words, ‘we are dying – but we shall at least die cured!’

  Grandsailles smiled bitterly, puckering up his eyes which became edged with a multitude of tiny and almost invisible wrinkles. He remembered the Hitlerian hordes, the Congress of Nuremberg, on the occasion of his last sojourn in Germany, and from the light of each of the syllables and of the candles that illuminated his table with a fanatically witty and Socratic atmosphere he saw emerging the spectre of the defeat of 1940.