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my father drinks that—that…"
    "There’s no need for you to apologize, mademoiselle." He smiled at her, rather smoothly, he thought. "Since we’ve already been introduced, and we’re relatives, after all, perhaps we might call each other by our first names? I’m Raymond."
    "Claire," she said softly.
    "Do you live near here, Claire?" he asked.
    "I live in Rennes, with my parents."
    "Ah. Well, that’s not far."
    She looked briefly at him again. Far from what, he was afraid she was going to say. He was struck by how very clear and calm her eyes were. Beautiful, really; melancholy and intelligent.
    "No," she said, "not far. Rennes is very nice."
    "I’m sure it is."
    They sat stiffly while he searched for something to talk about. Perhaps he ought to go; she was merely being polite to him, when it was he who had meant to offer politeness. But he continued to sit. Why, he wasn’t sure.
    "And you?" she said.
    "Pardon?"
    "Where do you live?"
    "Oh, in California; a city called San Mateo. You’ve probably never heard of it?"
    "Ah…no."
    "No, of course not. Well." He sipped suavely from a water glass, noticing too late the smudge of Madame Fougeray’s rich, plum-colored lipstick on the rim. "Yes," he said, "San Mateo. I’m a professor there. Uh, Claire, do you speak English? My French isn’t very good. That is," he added with uncharacteristic vanity, "my spoken French."
    "Yes, I speak it," she said in delightfully Gallic English, "but your French is excellent."
    "No, my accent is excellent. Which is a mixed blessing. Everyone thinks I understand much more than I do, and they speak so fast I can’t follow them."
    She smiled for the first time. "I have the opposite problem. I understand English very well, but my accent is so terrible people think I understand nothing, and shout at me and use sign language."
    No, he almost told her, your accent is beautiful, charming; it’s like music. His face grew warm. What a thing to say. Where were these ideas coming from?
    "You speak English extremely well," he said. "Where did you learn?"
    The conversation continued in this painful vein for another five minutes, then petered desolately out altogether. She had just told him that she was an accountant in her father’s sausage factory, and he simply couldn’t think of anything to reply.
    "Well…" he said, pushing back his chair.
    "You said you were a professor?" she said.
    He felt a swelling in his chest. She didn’t want him to go. "Yes, of European and American literature."
    Her eyes widened. "Truly? But I’m a graduate in literature myself. Of the University of Rennes."
    "You are? But you said you’re an accountant."
    "Well, yes, my father wants me to work in the factory, but my first love is literature. One day I will teach it too."
    "Really? That’s wonderful! I’m somewhat of a specialist in French literature myself," he proclaimed immodestly, "especially the nineteenth century. I have a Flaubert novel with me, as a matter of fact. In my opinion he’s the finest of them all. Well," he emended judiciously, "of the
early
nineteenth-century French novelists, that is. And of course with the exclusion of the romanticists."
    She laughed. "And I’ve brought a Balzac. I’ve been reading it for two days."
    "Which one?"
    "Les Illusions Perdues."
    "Ah."
    She tilted her head and looked at him, something like a sparkle in her pale eyes. "Oh? Don’t you like it? It seems to me a marvelous work, full of the most keen observation."
    "Of course it is, but an author isn’t a sociologist. I don’t believe he should be judged on ability to observe, but on the power of his literary style. Balzac’s is rudimentary at best, and he’s far too melodramatic for my taste, and too moralistic as well."
    "But isn’t Flaubert moralistic and melodramatic?"
    "Well, no, I don’t think I’d say that; at least, not as much. But it doesn’t matter; it’s the care he takes with each sentence that’s so wonderful—with settling for nothing less