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talking to her about crusades. When it comes down to brass tacks what does he offer us, your general? Austro-Hungary at the time of Francis Joseph, but without the waltzes, and a little atomic cracker which even the Chinese or Negroes will soon be able to make.”
    â€œEven so, Monsieur le Maire, if de Gaulle makes peace in Algeria I’ll vote for him even if it means voting against you. A thousand million a day it’s costing us, this war. Without Algeria we’d be able to improve our water supply.”
    â€œHow often do you drink water, Léonce?”
    Â * * * * 
    Marguerite, Donadieu’s old housekeeper, had surpassed herself. The trout swam in a black sauce faintly scented with thyme and lemon. The thrushes on toast might have done with a little more juniper, but they melted in the mouth and the clove gave them an exotic taste.
    The major ploughed through this succulent food without noticing it, much to Donadieu’s distress. He did not even praise the wine; he added water to it.
    The mayor sorrowfully thought to himself:
    â€œThere was a time when soldiers and priests enjoyed good living. The young priests today nibble at their cassocks and dabble in social services—when they’re not working as manual labourers! The officers play at revolutionary warfare and drink water, which leads them to overthrow governments because they annoy them.
    â€œWisdom, the great traditions of good living, tolerance and common sense, have happily found refuge among a few old Socialists, whom no one, alas, takes seriously.”
    They had their coffee in the arbour.
    â€œMy dear Philippe,” Donadieu began, “let me call you by your Christian name, for by making me his executor your uncle made me responsible for you in a way. . . . Marguerite, bring us the brandy—no, not the electors’ bottle, the other one, on the corner of the sideboard. You don’t drink brandy, you don’t smoke? But you’re going to be even more bored than I thought!
    â€œDo you know, at least, why Paul made you his only heir?”
    Philippe shrugged his shoulders. By leaning back a little he could see the sky and the first stars. He would have liked to be alone, and at the same time the idea of solitude made him frightened.
    â€œPaul thought that you’d get tired of the army one day, that you would then like to have some quiet spot in which to get it out of your system, to become once more a normal man who has had enough of great heroic conflicts which end up as charnel-houses, towns of which you can remember nothing because you creep through them in the dark, and villages being burnt at dawn. . . .
    â€œI’m quoting him, my dear Philippe—my own sentences are shorter and I don’t go in for sermons. But it looks as if Paul was right, because here you are. I must also tell you that he was not very fond of your sister or her husband, that he had quarrelled with your father and that he was proud of the little exploits you performed during the war.”
    Esclavier looked the older man straight in the eye.
    â€œMy uncle was mistaken, Monsieur Donadieu. It was not because I was fed up that I left the army, but because that particular army could not become the one we had dreamt about, a few of us, in a prisoner-of-war camp in Indo-China.
    â€œWe went as far as we could, we even crossed the Rubicon, as Uncle Paul would have said. Only, the man we brought to power is not one of us. He belongs to another army, another history. One of my friends, Boisfeuras, got himself killed, others resigned or even came to terms with the powers that be, the wildest of us dabbled in plots without a future. I preferred to hand in my papers.”
    â€œYour French Algeria was a cause that was lost in advance; you can’t go against the course of history.”
    â€œThe Israelis managed to, and it was a history two thousand years old.”
    â€œMy daughter’s