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refused . . . Oh, the poor boy . . . Oh, what did I do to him? . . . Oh, pray for him because . . . heh, heh, heh . . . I don’t know if he’s going to recover from it all.”
    Fine, why not? She had to say something to the gaggle of giggling nuns who would greet her upon her return, except that, bad luck, Perdican intercepts the letter, reads it (that, we agreed, was a stupid thing to do), realizes that she is lying through her teeth, and decides to punish her by taking up with Rosette, the poor little goose-girl at the castle who happened to be passing by at the worst possible moment.
    Camille sees them together, and riled up once again, realizes that she truly loves him and that she has to cut the crap, but continues it anyway, and Perdican—who’s had enough of the . . . the backside of all of her to-ing and fro-ing between him and Jesus C.—pretends/decides (a contested point between me and Franck to this day) once and for all to marry Rosette.
    So Camille loses it once and for all too and lets go of her rosary and her pride along with it.
    Ah! Super! They’re finally going to kiss after a thousand scenes in three acts, except that, bad luck again, Rosette, who was nearby, hears everything and kills herself in despair. And the rest you know.
    So . . .
    Good job, right?
    They really would have been better off fooling with love, those idiots . . .
    They had everything. Cash, beauty, health, youth, a nice daddy, feelings for each other, everything . . . and they destroyed it all, and killed someone while they were at it, on a . . . on a whim . . . out of selfishness . . . for the pleasure of beating around the bush and babbling around a fountain while batting each other on the nose with their fans.
    Disgusting.
    Â 
    b) (Franck’s version) Camille loves Perdican. It was true love. She loved him more than he had ever loved her and will ever love her.
    She knows it because when it comes to love, she is more of an expert than both he and his cock, however talented, put together. Why? Because at the convent, she had encountered True Love, Great Love, Pure Love. The type that never disappoints you and that has nothing to do with the sexual escapades that keep purepeople.com and its lawyers in business.
    Yes, she had been touched by grace and she was ready to sacrifice her happiness on Earth to serve her Eternal Lover.
    So she has simply come to give her uncle a kiss and get I don’t know what. (The dough that is coming to her from her mother? I don’t remember anymore . . . ). Alas, she realizes that her cousin Didi, even if he is fickle, featherbrained, and mortal, has a real effect on her.
    Damn. Everything is turned upside down.
    Fine, it’s true, she screwed everything up in her hypocritical letter in which she pretended to be a femme fatale, but one, he didn’t have to read it, two, he should have come to see her in person instead of taking advantage of that poor Rosette to piss her off (Rosette who, it must be said in passing, is a real human being, with a heart, a soul, tears and . . . uh . . . some geese and turkeys).
    Oh how petty is this revenge . . . But there you have it, she loves him. And when she loves, she is direct. Whether with God or with a coward. When she loves, she doesn’t stop to work things out. She gives her whole self. And when she got all upset earlier, that’s to say, in our scene, with her anxiety about love, death, waning attraction, and loyalty, it wasn’t at all to bore him, but so that he would reassure her.
    Alas, it didn’t work.
    Since she’s a thousand times more mature than he is and since he’s at any rate completely controlled by his dick (how would they have said it at the time? by his halberd with tassles?), he catches none of her hints and assumes she’s a poor, exalted Ms. Freeze completely misguided by her mother