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send me a kit and a stretcher and two nice boys to resuscitate my Francky, and I’ll leave you alone, promise!
    Hey, don’t wear yourself out . . . Swipe them from Abercrombie. That way, no assembly required.

 
    S
he’s dead. Adieu, Perdican!
    And then Franck stopped and gestured, as if to say, “Ta-daaaaaa! Stay tuned until after the commercial break!”
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    And I was waiting impatiently for the rest.
    Yes, I wondered how those two were going to manage to salvage the situation again, since the death of a pathetic human being, in those frilly clothes, was meaningless, and a good story, especially a love story, always ends with marriage, and singing, dancing, a tambourine, and so on.
    But no.
    It was over.
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    He found it moving. I found it irritating.
    He said it was great. I said it was dumb.
    He insisted it was a good lesson. I insisted it was a big waste.
    He defended Camille, her honesty, her purity, her pursuit of perfection, and I thought she was repressed, too easily influenced, never able to feel pleasure, masochistic.
    He despised Perdican while I . . . I understood him.
    He was convinced that she returned immediately to her convent. Sad and disappointed, but reconfirmed in her bad opinion of men. I was sure, though, that after receiving a few conciliatory love letters, she would surrender to him behind a bush.
    Basically, it was like we were fighting over a piece of meat and refused to let go.
    You could say we were wrestling with words.
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    Excuse me?
    What is it, little star?
    You’re lost?
    You don’t remember the play?
    Ah, okay, wait. Don’t move. I’ll give you my version and then Franck’s and, with a bit of luck, between the two you’ll have more or less Musset’s . . .
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    a) (My version) Camille leaves the convent after having heard throughout her entire adolescence the jeremiads of the nuns, who were simmering with bitterness, disappointment, or despair. Either they had been cheated on, or were ugly, or both, or their family didn’t have the means to pay a dowry. Sure, there were likely a few who were more virtuous and dedicated than the rest, but they don’t dupe young girls. They pray.
    Camille is still crazy about her cousin Perdican whom she had fantasized about for all those years, sealed up as she was in her Tupperware. Yes, in love, wet with desire,
 
pining and all that, but as she is really arrogant, she complains that he was surrounded by tons of other girls when he was in Paris, which seriously straightened his handlebar mustache, and she harassed him in every possible way so that he would say, like, getting down on his knees and grasping her woolen petticoat, “Fine, yes . . . it’s true, yes, I’ve screwed other girls . . . but it was just for my health, you know . . . I’ve never given a damn about all those girls . . . Plus, they were nothing but whores . . . You know very well I’ve never loved anyone other than you, my darling . . . Besides, I will never look at another woman for the rest of my life . . . I swear to you on a cross . . . C’mon, forgive me . . . Forgive me for having fallen into dark and dangerous places where I couldn’t see farther than the end of my cock . . . ”
    But as he doesn’t play along (uh, no . . . ) (and yet he loved her . . . ) (uh, yes . . . ) (but without all that other blather) (uh, no . . . ) (otherwise it’s no longer love, it’s an insurance policy) (uh, yes . . . ) (and all that is in our scene), she decides to go back to her bunker and writes a letter to her roommate in which, instead of saying, “Alas, we just don’t see eye to eye, him and me. Get out my bowl and my horsehair mattress. I’m coming back,” she makes a fuss about it along the lines of “Oh, my sister . . . Oh dear . . . Oh, I