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unbeliever.
    That is what I am, very much so, and forever.
    My God! What has become of Balthazar? Are our sufferings comparable? He is condemned to the flames, and I am free.
    He is not allowed to visit him.
    Balthazar.
    Créon.
    Him.
    The words of a deeply painful song. Three words. The only ones that mean anything in these days of distress.
    It has been announced that the trial will begin next week.
    The dice will be loaded.
    His death, it is said, will be an example. To whom? Is it necessary?
    Balthazar.
    My love.
    And the anger in me, deep inside me.
    We are forbidden to meet, to touch, to be again what we have been before, lovers.
    We love each other.
    Even without touching, we are still lovers.
    Will we meet again?

66
    I love you.
He writes this little phrase an incalculable number of times in his notebook.
    A little phrase so real, it embraces all of reality.
    He could even write: I worship you.
    Love, worship, what does it matter, nothing really matters, compared with what tomorrow will be, the pain that holds you in its embrace, as no man has ever done.
    To love God, to worship men, what does it really matter?
    This is a century in which it is rare to say I love you.
    He writes the little phrase, murmurs it in the silence.
    He is in love.
    He loves.
    His notes containing nothing but that inflexible little phrase are intercepted, he is sure of it. He never receives any reply. But they still talk, and answer each other, unseen.
    He also sent Balthazar a miniature. Light breaking through foliage. And their two shadows merging at the foot of a tree. Here again, not the slightest sign that Balthazar ever received it. Silence, a hell.
    I love you, written from the depths of hell.
    From there or elsewhere, they are words the other can hear.
    Do you hear me, my love? Can you still hear me? What do you hear of me?
    The boys he possessed, or who possessed him, are now forgotten.
    Don’t die.
    And Anne de Créon roams her mansion and persists in asking him questions. He has started closing his door to her. Let her die!
    Apart from Balthazar, nobody has the right to approach him.

67
    O ne night, he leaves the Créon mansion, never to return.
The capital is reduced for him to the few streets close to the prison, a tavern where he dozes without any desire, and a room in the house of Saint-Polgues, the friend who has not turned his back on the Créons, do you remember Saint-Polgues, he came riding across the moor one spring day, and do you remember Balthazar de Créon lying in the mud, surrounded by brambles?
    Saint-Polgues intercedes with the King for Créon to receive at least one letter from Sébastien.
    He is pugnacious.
    Â 
    He has succeeded.

68
    S ébastien Faure has vanished, the taciturn, insolent Sébastien Faure, her son’s lover. Fled without a word of explanation. Where is he? What is he up to? Has he been able to reach Balthazar?
    She has been refused everything: she cannot look at him, touch him, say to him: My son, she cannot say to him: I’m here, she cannot say to him: Don’t speak, let’s stay like this, don’t speak, she cannot say to him: How are you?
    One evening, an idea forms inside her, it is a beautiful idea, an exciting idea.
    To feel that she is somebody a while longer.
    She sends out invitations to all the nobility of France, invitations to a ball at the Créon mansion. She will be queen of the ball, and while it is in progress she will implore her guests to spare her son the stake.
    Even the King has been invited.
    She forgets that for weeks everyone has been avoiding her.
    There will be thirty thousand candles, heaps of food, dozens and dozens of decanters filled with the finest wines in the kingdom, musicians.
    Will the King come?
    She is Olympian in her patience, they are taking their time, King and courtiers alike, and she waits, bejeweled, scented, rouged, wrapped in satin and lace, seated in an armchair raised up on a dais, while chaconnes and