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country we rely on the moon, and when the moon is out no light can penetrate the window. The window is walled over and cast in a perfect black surface. Does it feel the same to be blind? I used to think so, but I've been told not. A blind pedlar who visited us regularly laughed at my stories of the Dark and said the Dark was his wife. We bought our pails from him and fed him in the kitchen. He never spilt his stew or missed his mouth the way I did. 'I can see,' he said, 'but I don't use my eyes.'
    He died last winter, my mother said.
    It's early dark now and this is the last night of my leave. We won't do anything unusual. We don't want to think that I'm going again.
    I have promised my mother that she will come to Paris soon after the Coronation. I've never been myself and it's the thought of that that makes it easier for me to say goodbye. Domino will be there grooming his preposterous horse, teaching the mad beast to walk in a quiet line with Court animals. Why Bonaparte has insisted on having that horse present at such an important time is not clear. It's a soldier's mount, not a creature for parades. But he's always reminding us that he's a soldier too.
    When Claude had finally gone to bed and we were alone, we didn't talk. We held hands until the wick burnt out and then we were in the dark.
    Paris had never seen so much money.
    The Bonapartes were ordering everything from cream to David. David, who had flattered Napoleon by calling his head perfecdy Roman, was given the commission to paint die Coronation, and he was to be found each day at Notre-Dame making cartoons and arguing with the workmen who were trying to do away with the ravages of revolution and bankruptcy. Josephine, given charge of the flowers, had not contented herself with vases and arrangements. She had drawn up a plan of the route to the cathedral from the palace and was engaged as intendy as David on her own ephemeral masterpiece. I first encountered her over the billiard table, where she was playing Monsieur Talleyrand, a gendeman not gifted with balls. In spite of her dress, which spread out would easily have made a carpet all the way to the cathedral, she bent and moved as though she wore nothing at all, making beautiful parallel lines with her cue. Bonaparte had dressed me up as a footman and ordered me to take her Highness an afternoon snack. She was fond of melon at four o'clock. Monsieur Talleyrand was to have port.
    This holiday mood of Napoleon's was almost a madness. He had appeared at dinner two nights ago dressed as the Pontiff and lewdly asked Josephine how intimate she would like to be with God. I stared into the chicken.
    Now, he had me out of my soldier's uniform and in Court dress. Impossibly tight. It made him laugh. He liked to laugh. It was his only relaxation apart from those hotter and hotter baths he took at any time of the day or night. In the palace the bathroom staff lived in the same state of unrest as the kitchen staff. He might cry out for hot water at any moment, and woe betide the man on duty if the tub were not just full, just so. I'd only seen the bathroom once. A great big room with a tub the size of a line-ship and a huge furnace in one corner, where the water was heated and drawn and poured back and reheated over and over again until the moment came and he wanted it. The attendants were specially chosen from amongst the best ox- wrestlers in France. Fellows who could handle the copper ketdes like tea-cups worked alone, stripped to the waist, wearing only sailor's breeches that caught the sweat and held it in dark stripes down each leg. Like sailors they had their liquor ration, but I don't know what it was made of. The biggest, Andre, offered me a swig from his flask the time I poked my head round the door, gasping at the steam and this huge man who looked like a genie. I accepted out of politeness, but spat the brown stuff over the tiles, frantic at the heat. He pinched my arm the way the cook pinched spaghetti