'Twas the night before Christmas Break,¹ and of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world,² Beatrice Rheiner³ walked into mine, reading Très Riches Heures du Duc de la Grande Cascade,⁴ from which she quoted, "je ne sais pas que combien de fois j'ai passé d'une illusion douce à l'autre."⁵

∼  Amaurón, And to Gaul a Goodnight⁶

   Jack sat alone in his car with its motor running, its radio playing, and its headlights throwing a soft light on his dark and silent house. Mariella was Christmas shopping. His kids were . . . somewhere. Doing? He didn't know what, and that still unsettled him. He lifted a bottle from between his legs, twisted off its cap, and took a swig from the only beer he'd drink that night. The radio mentioned overnight snow showers. He took another nip, backed out of the driveway, and drove to the T-junction at the entrance to the neighborhood, where he heard himself sing, destination anywhere, east or west, I don't care. He opened the console between the front seats and searched for the The Commitments soundtrack but couldn't find it.⁷ Which way to turn? He lifted his beer and rocked its neck like a metronome, canting rhythmically "eeny-meeny-miney-mo," and drove off.

   Jack began pushing the pre-set buttons on the radio, each summoning a station that played his music. What was he in the mood for that night? He wasn't sure. He wanted—how did that song his kids had listened to put it?—oh yea, songs that reminded him of the good times, songs that reminded him of the better. He took a sip of beer. Keep truckin', like the doodah man—he quickly pushed another button. A short jingle proclaimed, "Your favorite Oldies on The Buzz FM."

   The Oldies?! His music wasn't old; it was classic. Oldies were Elvis and Chubby Checker and Bobby Vinton. Oldies were lame shit like Oo–ee–oo–ah–ah–ting–tang–walla–walla–bing–bang.⁸ The next song made him look over at the dashboard. There! That's a song. He turned up the volume so that Springsteen—"The Boss," he said out loud—and the E Street Band could fill the car.⁹ He drummed the steering wheel. Real music. Urban. Gritty.

Got a wife and kids in Baltimore, Jack
I went out for a ride and I never went back.
Like a river that don't know where it's flowing,
I took a wrong turn and I just kept going.¹⁰

   Its title is? He squirmed at not being able to remember. It's, it's . . . can't remember. Screw it, and to hell with those screwy brain-exercises on PBS. Take my donation, just don't remind me that I'm getting older and older. What the hell is the name of this song?! Wait it out. Wait for the chorus. Here it comes. Everybody's got a hungry heart. "Hungry Heart"—exactly! Hungry heart—nothing old-fashioned about that sentiment. He sang along lustily, lifted his beer and tried to feel rebellious but couldn't make it stick. He was, he realized, beyond the hungry heart years. He thought of Mariella. He'd survived. No, that wasn't it. It hadn't actually ever felt the need to go. He'd never felt middle-age crazy or a life of quiet desperation. He'd seen it happen to others, but had never been terrorized into desperate revolt by the louder and louder tick of the clock.¹¹ He finished his beer. Hungry heart. Alliterative. Hubert Horatio Humphrey¹² and Humbert Humbert,¹³ who he imagined buying a muscle-car, driving to the beach with the top down, staring—not at the shoreline—at the pleated skirt of the school girl beside him. Nowadays, she'd be chewing her gum and texting her friends. Serve him right.

   Still, lots of guys struggled. He'd seen them at family get-togethers and parties. Not actually sullen, but definitely more quiet as they let the women carry the conversation. Some women go on and on and then their guy takes the dog for a walk to nowhere, mile after mile, until their restlessness gives way to weariness.

   Jack thought about his bird-feeder and his garden. Hardly revolutionary, hobbies really, something to satisfy his curiosity and willingness to try new things. He made a quick audit of his psyche. Not bad, no need to howl,¹⁴ not yet anyway, but were cells of dissatisfaction metastasizing somewhere in his soul?

   He continued to push the radio buttons while the road slipped by unseen. Some time later, the car had found its way into downtown Randall. Empty sidewalks. Plenty of parking. Where was everyone? Ah,semester break, of course. He drove through the campus, passing his old dorm, indulging nostalgia but falling short of sentimentality. He didn't feel the need to get out and wander. He merely observed that the campus looked as though someone had detonated a neutron bomb, sweeping away the people but leaving the buildings unscathed.¹⁵ Jack looked about and realized once again that places were not so much about the buildings as the people who occupied them. The students Jack had known long ago had scattered to the safety of his mind, where they could be forever young.

   Jack's people were not those of "Neutron" Jack,¹⁶ the CEO who built his reputation closing American manufacturing plants and (don't tell anyone, it's a secret) shipping countless jobs overseas. Sure, he drove the company's stock higher and higher, which brought him superstar status, and that undoubtedly fed his ego. Qu'ils mangent de la brioche.¹⁷ The greedy shareholders loved his toughness. The myopic media deified him. (He had his company buy a major network to make sure it did!).

   Real estate developers bought the deserted factories and converted them into "luxury condos." Did Mr. CEO ever wonder how many of his displaced employees could afford to buy one? How many of them stopped outside the converted factories and read the signs: "For Sale: The American Dream at Olde Factory Estates."

   Ol'factory Estates—something smelly about that.

   Quite a few probably did buy. There was plenty of cheap money available on little collateral because of insufficient government regulation. Don't get in the way of greed! Keep the government out of the private sector! A rising tide lifts all boats! But what if that tide is a tsunami, and the boats are swamped? What then Mr. AM-radio, right-wing nutcase talk-show host who has millions in the bank? People listen to those idiots. Amazing. Those demagogues are right about one thing: politicians on both sides of the aisle are pathetic. People put up with them. Dumb asses. Jackasses and jackals. Who said Democracy is a form of worship, the worship of jackals by jackasses?¹⁸

   Jack turned onto Main Street and drove toward the town center. He passed International House and remembered Skeeter's outrage that Pepé Le Pew was neither French nor Québécois.¹⁹ From across the street he heard the college bells toll the hour. He continued down the slope and parked in front of the Reininghaus Block.²⁰ It looked essentially the same. The College Shoppe was still there on the left, but the Gibby Ross had given way to Thompson's Flowers & Gifts, both of which were dark.²¹ The only light came from a sign over a new doorway between them. Apparently, it led beneath street level to the Down on Main Street Pub.²² They swiped that name, he thought, from a Bob Seger song.

   Jack stepped out onto the sidewalk. Where the old sandwich board once stood he noticed half a wooden barrel containing soil and brown remnants of dahlias, hardy mums and marigolds. Swinburned—fruitless husk and fugitive flower.²³ His head sung, where have all the flowers gone? And then a different verse, where have all the young girls gone? Where were Debbie, Linda, Donna, and Carol—taken husbands everyone?²⁴ Settled down somewhere with their middle-age crazy husbands, wondering where their cowboy's gone.²⁵ He looked down the deserted sidewalk and noticed a light snow falling from the street lights. Snow, neige. He joked, was it the aesthete Harold Roux²⁶ who asked this same street, "Mais où sont les neiges d'antan?"²⁷

   Jack pulled his collar up and stuffed his hands into his jacket pockets. He stepped up to the window of the flower shop and peered into the shadows of his old haunt. Jackasses— that quote was from Mencken. Pretty sure of that. Yea, Mencken. He saw the door that led upstairs and looked for the old sign—of course it wasn't there—and the familiar words: NO EXIT—Pas besoin de gril: L'enfer, c'est les autres.²⁸ His mind rolled with words. Hell, enfer, une saison en enfer, saison means season but not seasoning, the well-seasoned spicy girls of the Gibby Ross and les liaisons dangereuses,²⁹ the tasty and delectable Spice Girls of Yore, the . . .

   Barbara!

   His mind quieted as he struggled to resurrect her face. Barbara who ran the McCarthy presidential campaign.³⁰ Last name? Hmm. Barbara, Barbara . . . russet-haired, and a sensational body, Barbara who was married to . . . Professor Connage.³¹ That's it! Barbara Connage and the night we sat right over there (he tapped his finger on the glass as he pointed) in the last booth by the windows.

   Jack pivoted and walked to his car. She was how old then? Someone at the campaign had made a cake for her "first annual thirty-ninth birthday," so she'd be how old now? He opened the car door. Quite old. He got in and closed the door. With gray hair? Probably. Maybe not.

   These days, wise guys in bars asked their buddies, "Do you think her carpet matches her curtains?"

   "Does she have any carpeting at all?" Hearty laughs, which Mariella called girlish tee-hees in a lower register.

   Barbara Connage, she could be . . . Jack looked over at the building . . . dead, gone like Mr. Malzis, capo di tutti i capi.³² Barbara at the Gibby Ross, yes siree, and then back at the apartment, where the sticky brain and slick shtick of Le Duc parroted French long into the night. He closed his eyes and heard, un soir, j'ai assis la Beauté sur mes genoux, et je l'ai trouvée amère, and asked himself, et je l'ai injuriée?³³

   A wave of unease washed onto the shore of his mind only to be flattened by a deep yawn. Jack put the key in the ignition, turned it a single click, and set the radio low. He his head back and let his mind drift with the music. He watched a series of sepia-toned photographs flip through his mind, the stills³⁴ quickening in pace until they formed a dreamy sequence he'd already seen,³⁵ its soundtrack replete with a familiar refrain:

Oh, the questions of a thousand dreams,
what you do and what you see.
Lover can you talk to me?³⁶

*         *         *

   Years ago inside the Gibby Ross, Jack was sitting alone in a booth along the windows, with his eyes closed and his hands clasping a book when he heard a tap on the glass. He opened his eyes and saw the pleasant grin of Barbara Connage. He smiled, straightened himself, and waved her inside. She came through the door and tossed her shoulder-length reddish hair, asking as she approached, "Did I disturb you? You were certainly lost in thought."

   "Le petit rêve.³⁷ Take off your coat. Have a seat. It's great to see you." She smiled, her greens eyes fascinating him once again.

   "Still studying?" she asked with surprise.

   "Contemplating, a couple of French works." He held up a book so that she could read its cover—La Farce de maître Pierre Pathelin par Amaurón—and said, "A work in which the author has nothing to say about L'Origine du monde by Courbet."³⁸

   "Where's your usual gaggle of friends?"

   He motioned her to sit on the opposite bench seat. "Where's my good old gang done gone? Stranded on Calypso."³⁹

   "And your enemies? Given them the night off have you?"

   Jack swiveled his head as if searching the restaurant. "Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?⁴⁰ Lurking somewhere, I suppose."

   "How did your semester go? It is over, right?"

   "Three exams, which went fairly well, and one paper, which I handed in barely an hour ago: La Comédie Humaine: Scènes de la vie privée."⁴¹

   "Sounds interesting, but I'll bet you're glad to be a man of leisure."

   "As one of the many characters in one of the many novels I had to read this semester would have said, rien à faire, je suis un gosse de riches, un intellectuel, un type qui ne travaille pas de ses mains."⁴² He held his hands out, spit on one palm and rubbed it with the other. "Clean as a whistle, don't mind the spittle."

   Barbara looked disappointed and said, "Perhaps you should catch up on your sleep." She started to rise.

   "Oops," Jack said, wiping his hands on his jeans. "Sorry about that. Too many late nights—I'm kinda brain dead. L'homme est né pour penser, mais les pensées pures le fatiguent et l'abattent.⁴³ Please, Barbara, sit down." As she lowered herself Jack made the sign of the cross and said, "Bless me Mother Superior for I have sinned."

   "You're forgiven," she said, adding with mock sternness, "but I'm not old enough to be your mother. Her much-younger sister, maybe."

   "Much prettier younger sister."

   "Don't lay it on too thick, Casanova."⁴⁴

   Jack considered her face. "You don't wear much make-up." She pursed her lips. "I didn't mean that as an insult. You don't really need it."

   "You didn't make it all the way through charm school, apparently."

   "Hotchkiss wasn't for me."⁴⁵

   "Monti Meliora Sequamur.

   "Say what?" he asked.

   "It's the Hotchkiss motto," she answered solemnly. "'After instruction, let us move on to pursue higher things.' My husband Alec is a graduate, and like his father before him, those words are engraved on his heart."

   "Did they leave room for anything else?" Barbara looked at him dully and then out the window. Jack downed the dregs of his beer and said, "Can I do you the honor of letting you buy me a drink?" he said brightly.

   She engaged his eyes blankly. "You're on a roll."

   "Downhill, I'm afraid." He gave his forehead a couple taps with his knuckles. "Brain's still not working properly."

   She reached for her pocketbook. "Allow me. A sedative can only help."

   Jack stayed her arm. "No need to pay for the rounds individually. You can run a tab."

   "The British have a word for that, 'cheek.'"

   "I vow, beautiful lady," he said in a serious tone, "to repay your kind offer some day."

   "Don't worry about it," she said, hailing Mr. Malzis from his seat beside the cash register with a smile. Jack introduced her to him and ordered a beer and white wine. After his departure, Jack said to no one, "He made her an offer, she honored his offer, and all night long he was . . . "

   "I'm sorry, what?" asked Barbara.

   "Nothing. I was just wondering whether it's OK for you to be seen in here."

   Her brow furrowed. "In here? Is this some den of iniquity?" She looked up and saw Mr. Malzis with their drinks and was unsure whether he'd heard her. He set down the drinks, smiled, and walked away. "What's wrong with this place?"

   "Nothing, nothing at all." He raised his glass and impersonated the raspy voice of Humphrey Bogart, "Here's looking at you, sweetheart."⁴⁶ They touched glasses. "I mean, this place is usually haunted by college students."

   "I just needed to get out of the house. My husband is in Connecticut inheriting a mountain of money from his aunt Rosalind, the childless and some say love-less wife of the famous J. Dawson Ryder."⁴⁷

   "Time well spent, I'd say. And as for you, there's nothing wrong with getting away for a few hours, as Madame Anaïs might have said to Madame Serizy."⁴⁸

   "Besides, semester-break is when we townies take back the streets, the restaurants, the movie theater, etcetera."

   "On behalf of the students, let me say that we don't mind you using the hardware store but the grocery store is strictly off limits."

   "No problem. In this bastion of enlightened thinking, we eat our children. Did you know that Goya painted Saturn devouring his son and hung it in his dining room?."⁴⁹

   "That's in poor taste."

   "Depends on the marinade."

   "Barbara! Funny lady."⁵⁰

   "You're surprised?"

   "You were mostly all business during the campaign. One of the guys used to call you 'Barbara Blue Skies, No Candy,' a parody of the title of the novel by Gael Greene."⁵¹

   "Was I that glum?"

   "Focused, I'd say. It's nice to see you relaxed. Rive a rittle." He tested the depth of her eyes. "Do you feel like playing," he let the phrase hang, "some pinball?" He sensed her amusement. "Come on. Let's go downstairs to the bar." He got up from the table, taking his beer with him. "I'm the pinball wizard," and sang, "ever since I was a young boy, I've played the silver ball."⁵²

   Barbara gathered her coat and pocketbook. "Excellent. I've always wanted to see," she sang, "that deaf, dumb and blind kid—sure plays a mean pinball."

   "You are full of surprises, aren't you?!"

   "I do listen to the radio, Jack, even while chained to the stove and washing machine."

   "Radio? I thought your generation called it 'the wireless.'"

   "Watch it."

   "I suppose you're up on all the current hits, all the latest acts, according to Ed Sullivan, that is."⁵³

   "Careful."

   "You must know," he sang, "Dominique, nique, nique s'en allait tout simplement, routier pauvre et chantant."

   "Enough! The last thing I need to hear is a singing French nun."

   "Sœur Sourire is Belgian.⁵⁴ Sing along: En tous chemins, en tous lieux, il ne parle que du bon Dieu. Did you see her centerfold in Rolling Stone?⁵⁵ She has a new single out, a duet: "Tu m'aimes, tu m'aimes, oh oui tu m'aimes . . . moi non plus."⁵⁶

   As they approached the top of the stairs, Mr. Malzis called out, "The bar is open but no one go down, so I send Max home to talk to his goats."

   "We're just going to play some pinball. Do you mind if we pour our own and settle later? It'll save you from going up and down."

   "College kids know how to count? I'm surprised, me."

   "I'll see to it," said Barbara.

   "You, pretty lady, I trust."

   Jack followed the jaunty sway of her hips down the stairs to the pinball machine. She had no experience but caught on quickly. Jack showed her how to bump the machine to manipulate the ball, but occasionally overdid and tilted away games. After an hour they ascended and Barbara paid the bill. Mr. Malzis smiled weakly and snapped off the lights as soon as they stepped outside.

   Jack said, "That was a chilly good-bye from him."

   "He just wanted to get home. We were his only customers."

   "It's cold out here. Where's your car?"

   "She reached in her pocket and pulled out her keys. "Got the keys, but I didn't bring the car." She put away the keys and put on her gloves. "It wasn't this cold when I left the house and I didn't expect to be out this long."

   "Where do you live?"

   "Not far out on Edgewood Road."

   "And you?"

   "In an old house in Paris, that was covered with vines.⁵⁷ On Edgewood as well."

   "With Madeline?"

   "I'm not good with names, but my roommates are twelve little girls in two straight lines. Your lucky day!" He took her arm. "You get to have me escort you home."⁵⁸

   "I don't know what they say. You play pinball aggressively. I'm surprised you don't forfeit every game with a tilt."

   "You've got to play on the edge, Barbara. A vaincre sans péril, on triomphe sans gloire."⁵⁹

   They spent the next ten minutes talking mostly about the other students who worked on the campaign, Jack filling her in on their true personalities, their post-collegiate plans, if they had any at all.

   Jack stopped at the end of his walkway. "This is it. Home, where I have to take me in."

   "Not bad. Pricey?"

   "Enough to keep me in canned goods."

   They stood not knowing quite what to say to one another. A gust of wind rustled the trees. Jack said, "Listen to the wind in the trees," and recited:

Et les bois, et les monts, et toute la nature,
Semblaient interroger dans un confus murmure⁶⁰

   "The wind is asking questions." He sang, "the questions of a thousand dreams, what you do and what you see. Look up at the sky, Barbara, and vous vous consolerez comme je fais en regardant du côté du ciel."⁶¹

   "Amazing sky. Crystal clear. So many stars."

   "Stunning, pas un nuage aux cieux, mes yeux plongeaient plus loin que le monde réel.⁶² When I was a kid—quand je n'avais que le bleu du ciel pour ami—I'd lay in a field all by myself and look for things in the sky."

   "Shapes in the clouds?"

   "Yea, that sort of thing. Je vivais là-haut en idée, je ne me sentais plus rien de pesant, je montais, montais, et je devenais tout aise.⁶³ It was heavenly—until the ants got up your ass, but that's nature for you. If you stayed quiet yourself, you might actually hear and understand the cricket chirping in your ear."⁶⁴

   He looked at her intently. In the distance the ten o'clock train whistled and he thought about empty niches in the stone.

   "When I was a kid," said Barbara, "I'd hear the trains at night and wonder."

   "Les hommes, dit le petit prince, ils s'enfournent dans les rapides, mais ils ne savent plus ce qu'ils cherchent. Alors ils s'agitent et tournent en rond . . . "⁶⁵

   "It's just one French phrase after another with you. I should have paid better attention to French back in high school."

   Jack gave a desultory shrug. "Et il ajouta: Ce n'est pas la peine."⁶⁶

   "About all the French I remember is Voltaire—Je pense, donc je suis—I think therefore I am always annoyed about something."⁶⁷

   "That was Descartes. People get confused. Most philistines think that 'Donc je suis un malheureux et ce n'est in ma faute in celle de la vie' is Gertrude Stein, but it's Laforgue.⁶⁸ But you listen to the radio, so you must know the French in Labelle's song, "Hey sista, go sista, soul sista, flow sista,' and the immortal 'Giuchie, Giuchie, ya ya dada.'"⁶⁹

   "That's not French!"

   "Patience! I'm getting to it! 'Mocha Chocalata ya ya,' and the chorus, which gets to the point rather succinctly, 'Voulez vous coucher avec moi, ce soir? Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?'" He looked at her expectantly.

   "I haven't heard it. I can pick out a few of the words from my high school French."

   "Enculer, décharger, godemiché, gougnotte, gousse, soixante-neuf, minette, mimi, putain, bordel—ces mots-là sont familiers à toutes les petites filles."⁷⁰

   "But I'm not talentless. At faculty parties I often find myself swapping quotes from Shakespeare," she said wistfully."

   "Lord Shakenspear," Jack mused, "how little I do know . . .

I do know, when the blood burns,
how prodigal the soul lends the tongue vows.⁷¹

   "Hamlet," said Barbara.

   "Le Prince du Danemark."

   "That research paper certainly has you thinking in French."

   "I've been parlay-babbling for years." Jack envisioned Mrs. Hanbury in her rocker. "I learned a lot from an old woman in my neighborhood, Madame Pouilly-Fuissé."⁷² His face brightened, and he joked for his old friend's sake, "la reine de Chardonnay."

   "French is so . . . I dunno . . . it turns me on."

   "You're not Gomez Addams in drag, are you?"⁷³

   "Who?"

   "Gomez. The guy married to, and fortunate enough to be sleeping with, the bodacious Morticia (née Frump) Addams in the TV sitcom."

   "I don't watch television—it's chewing gum for the eyes."

   "Well, whenever Morticia says something in French her hubby Gomez gets turned on and says, 'Tish! when you speak French, it drives me wild, Cara Mia!' Then he smooches her from hand to shoulder. It doesn't take much to get him going: sac du papier suffise."⁷⁴

   Jack reached past Barbara and opened his mailbox. Barbara raised her key chain and shined a small flashlight into the empty box. She let the light fall on the outside. "What's this writing?" She read, "John Clondale, aisle—"

   "Asile D'Aliénés."⁷⁵

   "And below that, is that the French word for fatality?"

   "Fatalité. Fate. Do you believe that everything happens according to a script written by someone else," he pointed up, "a script slowly unrolled by time?"

   "All the world's a stage," recited Barbara, "so a script would be handy." She hesitated, "but believing in a script written by someone else, that's for cowards, those who don't want to take responsibility for their actions."

   "Not just that, mais en raisonnant à ta façon, il n'y a point de crime qu'on ne commît sans remords—it demolishes remorse, or so Jacques has been told."⁷⁶

   "Tell me, Jacques, what's this other word you've scrawled?"

   "Et ce mot qui est au-dessous, gravé par la main d'ami, Skeeter, that's Αναγνεια. It's the Greek word for 'impurity.' Il eût été bien plus simple d'écrire—Fatum.⁷⁷ I wrote it there to apprise the Greek mafia that delivers every pizza in this town that I expect quality. Have you seen that guy Charlie Halatas delivering pizza out of the trunk of his Mercedes?"

   "He's living the American dream, working hard to acquire a pile."

   "While I read Pindar!"

   "There's always Dean Nixon's school of hard knocks in Khe Sanh."⁷⁸

   "Or the alternative school it has inspired in Nelson, British Columbia.⁷⁹ Speaking of cold climes, it's nippy out here. Why don't you come in, cara mia.

   "That's a kind offer."

   "Ce n'est pas une acte gratuit.⁸⁰ It's a sensible offer. Tu es une femme d'un certain age, et rien ne forme un jeune homme comme une liaison avec une femme comme il faut.⁸¹ Let's at least sit on the porch."

   She looked at him suspiciously but followed him up the walkway. "I don't understand a word you're saying."

   "Les grandes personnes ne comprennent jamais rien toutes seules, et c'est fatigant, pour les enfants, de toujours leur donner des explications."⁸²

   Barbara climbed the stairs and said, "I do know that people talk in this small town," she looked around, "I have to live here."

   "Je suis l'homme de la nature avant d'être celui de la société."⁸³

   Barbara took his elbow. "One must be respectable here, don't you know, speak in well-measured tones, carefully disguise one's ambition."

   Jack looked outraged. "Quels gredins que les honnêtes gens!"⁸⁴

   "This is New Hampshire, home of the original Peyton Place."⁸⁵

   "Je sais, mais nul ne doit être inquiété pour ses opinions."⁸⁶

   "Harper Valley P.T.A. and all that."⁸⁷

   Jack seized her arms and cried, "Up the revolution! Come on, let's go inside." She said nothing, so Jack added, "Rester ici ou partir, cela revenait au même."⁸⁸

   "I suppose we can't stand out here all night."

   "Le scandale du monde est ce qui fait l'offense, et ce n'est pas pécher que pécher en silence."⁸⁹

   "And I've got no good reason to rush home," she said dully, "not with the professor out of town."

   "I'm sure he's thinking of you.

Quant sui en mon labor alés,
Tantost espringués et balés,
Et démenés tel esbaudie,
Que ce semble grant ribaudie;
Et chantés cum une seraine.
Diex vous mete en male semaine!⁹⁰

   "I'm sure he's not thinking about me," she said testily. "And certainly not in anything as romantic as French."

   Jack sensed an opportunity. He opened the front door, reached inside and flicked on the light. He extended an ushering arm. "Bienvenue."⁹¹

   Barbara stepped over the threshold, and Jack told her, "Enfin seuls!⁹² Put your coat any old place and have a seat on the sofa. I'll see what we have for refreshments."

   She removed her gloves, stuffed them in her pockets and draped her coat over a kitchen chair. "A day lily! Someone keeps the place tidy, your mother?"

   "Kiki, la reine de Montparnasse—another Alice in my life."⁹³ Barbara leaned over to smell it. "You can kiss it if you want. Nothing dire will happen; it's French, not German."

   "No thanks. Love the vase, fancy label, 'Welch's Grape Jelly.'"

   "What did you expect, a lily in a golden pot?"⁹⁴

   "Do you have a roommate?"

   "I hardly see her."

   "Her?"

   "A purely Platonic 'her,' a roommate of convenience. She's gone home to Rhode Island." He waved a box. "I found some crackers."

   "Cheese? Any wine?"

   Jack opened the refrigerator door and turned his head toward Barbara. He let silence summon her attention before wrinkling his nose and saying with theatrical disgust, Puis les odeurs s'effaraient, roulaient les unes sur les autres, s'épaississaient des bouffées du port-salut, du Limbourg, peu à peu confondues, épanouies en une seule explosion de puanteurs."⁹⁵

   "Was that the wine list or is your fridge over-ripe?"

   "Cependant, il semblait que c'étaient les paroles mauvaises de ton Duc qui puaient is fort.⁹⁶ Ah, fruit of the vine." He withdrew a bottle of Chablis, opened it, and carried it along with two glasses to the sofa, where he sat at the opposite end.

   "Required reading?" asked Barbara. "Playboy, The New Republic, TV Guide—everything but the Sears toy catalog."

   He handed her a glass. "That's in the bedroom, where it can encourage me to pray at night and have pleasant dreams."

   She stopped sipping, "Playboy doesn't do that?"

   "Naughty, naughty." He raised his glass. "A toast!"

Une jeune chimère, aux lèvres de ma coupe,
Dans l'orgie, a donné le baiser le plus doux;
Elle avait les yeux verts, et jusque sur sa croupe
Ondoyait en torrent l'or de ses cheveux roux.⁹⁷

   "Sounds lovely," she said. He blew her a playful kiss. "What's it mean?"

   "The usual adjuration, 'bottoms up.'"

   "It was rather long-winded for that."

   "I could sing you a toast."

Qu'en mouillant votre bouche il en reçoit d'attraits,
Et que l'on voit par lui votre bouche embellie!
Ah! l'un de l'autre ils me donnent envie,
Et de vous et de lui je m'enivre à longs traits.⁹⁸

   "The wine is nice." She peered over the rim. "Have you got any pot?"

   Jack leaned away with surprise. "Bérylune, are you asking ai-je ici l'herbe qui chante ou l'oiseau qui est bleu?"⁹⁹

   "I've never tried pot."

   "Sorry, but the only grass here is under the snow outside, mais elle ne chante pas."¹⁰⁰

   "Pity."

   "Not really. Pot weirds me out, makes me," he looked for the correct word, "not paranoid but edgy, uncomfortable. Je puis à la rigueur me passer de l'herbe qui chante; mais il me faut absolument l'oiseau bleu."¹⁰¹

   "Not sure what you said, amigo, but I'm sure I agree." Barbara stood up and walked to his poster of Bridgette Bardot.¹⁰² "The 'sex kitten,'" she raised her hand, scratched the air with her long, red fingernails and hissed, 'what mood does she put you in?"

   "She does for me what Salomé did for Jean Des Esseintes."¹⁰³

   She looked at Jack. "Who's your decorator?"

   "Certainly not the hermit of Fontenay, and not Achille Devéria,"¹⁰⁴ he raised his index finger in recognition, "but rather Dieu . . . et Dieu créa la femme. Bardot was superbe in that film, so deceitfully disarming. It's little wonder the mousquetaire Aramis said, 'la femme a été créée pour notre perte, et c'est d'elle que nous viennent toutes nos misères," which is painting with a fairly broad brush.¹⁰⁵ I'd love a matching poster of Bardot's co-star Isabelle Corey.¹⁰⁶ Did you see her in Bob, Le Flambeur?"

   "No," she said, returning to sit on the sofa.

   "I've got to get you down to Cambridge for some foreign films." He sat down beside her, closer this time, and clinked her glass. "As for the Corey poster, my birthday is Michaelmas."¹⁰⁷

   "Michaelmas, I haven't heard that word since, since Hector was a pup."

   "You've got more than nine months to shop."

   "Thoughtful of you. Are you sure you don't need it for Christmas?"

   "No rush." He added wine to her glass. "Isabelle Corey," he insisted. "Definitely not Racquel Welch. Everyone has her poster."¹⁰⁸ He leaned over and whispered, "Which is to say 'everyone's had her.' Frankly, that makes her a fantasy slut."

   "A poster . . . has a bad reputation?"

   "Dreadful, I know," he said as he topped off his own glass.

   "Jack, how long have you been fourteen?"

   "Fourteen? Hmm. Even the King of Porn—Long John Holmes himself—isn't a full fourteen, Barbara."¹⁰⁹

   "Is that your way of telling me you're nearly six?"

   "Barbara!" he exclaimed with mock surprise.

   "Is that your best retort?"

   "Ce qui manque aux orateurs en profondeur, ils vous le donnent en longueur," he said and laughed.¹¹⁰

   "Another private joke, I suppose. You're always joking around. Does anyone know the real Jack Clondale, even you?"

   "They say that il avait été l'amant de la reine Marie-Antoinette entre les messieurs de Coigny et de Lauzun." He leaned toward her and added gravely, "Il avait mené une vie bruyante de débauches, pleine de duels, de paris, de femmes enlevées, avait dévoré sa fortune et effrayé toute sa famille."¹¹¹

   "Seriously, who are you?"

   "L'homme moyen . . . Jacques Chevre-Feuille?" he asked but she made no response.¹¹² "Je suis issu d'une famille très ancienne, mais qui n'a eu que peu d'illustration et moins encore de biens, and that's the truth."¹¹³

   "Most of which was hidden behind a French facade."

   "Jacques le bavard, of course!¹¹⁴ La parole nous a été pour déguiser notre pensée.¹¹⁵ I thought you liked it when I spoke French. It seems to arouse," he winked at her, "your animal instincts." He put a finger to his temple and assumed an air of contemplation. "On m'a assuré, dit le Chat, que vous aviez le don de vous changer en toutes sortes d'animaux; que vous pouviez, par exemple, vous transformer en lion, en éléphant."¹¹⁶ She deadpanned him. "As for myself, I prefer to remain human. 'François Xavier Auguste was a gay Mousquetaire, the pride of the camp, the delight of the fair.'"

   "Of Fire Island."

   "Tappington Manor. 'He'd a mien so distingué and so débonnaire, and shrugg'd with a grace so recherché and rare.'" He looked at her for some recognition, saw none, and said, "Ingoldsby!"¹¹⁷ Jack leaned close and searched deep into her eyes. "And who are you?" He made to kiss her, but she stood and walked to his book case. He rose and followed her. She looked at him, her mien vulnerable. "'Allo, 'Allo? Are you the séduisante Michelle Dubois?¹¹⁸ Where is your trench coat and black beret, Michelle, ma belle—words that go together well, n'est-ce pas?"¹¹⁹ He leaned again to kiss her, but she turned away, so he whispered in her ear. "Listen very carefully. I shall say this only once: En art comme en amour, l'instinct suffit."¹²⁰

   "I'm not Michelle," she said firmly, then added in a softer tone, "I'm Barbara."

   "Tu fais tourner de ton nom, tous les moulins de mon cœur.¹²¹ But what's in a name, Rosey? For all I know you could Biondetta, le diable amoureux."¹²² He put his hands on her waist, turned her, and kissed her uncommitted lips. "If you are, I must speak Spanish." He cocked one eyebrow and said, "Las gitanas de la Sierra Morena quieren carne de hombres."¹²³

   "French," she said.

   "It will cost you," he said and kissed her until she fully relented.

   "Speak French," she implored, putting her hands behind his head and kissing him deeply.

   When their lips finally parted Jack said, "Air, I must have fresh air." That seemed to remind him of something. He sighed and recited in a soft, distant tone, "Au milieu du portique, en plein soleil, une femme nue était attachée contre une colonne . . . "¹²⁴

   "Cologne! That's French for 'toilet water,' which sounds disgusting."

   "What do I smell?" asked Jack. La vapeur du cinnamome enveloppe ses membres nus." He took her face in his hands. "J'ai cru reconnaître Ammonaria," jumped back suddenly, passed his hands over his forehead, and looked heavenward. "Non! non! je ne veux pas y penser!" He turned and walked to a mirror on the wall. Peering into the glass he asked, "Colonne ou pilier? Elle est enchaînée à un pilier sous un globe de verre et vingt serpents affamés la dévorent en détail toute vive."¹²⁵ He wheeled abruptly and half-shouted, "Témoin Dalila! Vous savez les Écritures, hein?"¹²⁶

   "Don't play the saint with me, Jack."

   He held his hands to his chest reverently. "Me in the role of Simon Templar, never!" He took her hand and led her back onto the sofa, where he sat down and pulled her onto his knees. They kissed for nearly a minute. Jack broke away and said, "Il avais pris Rachel sur ses genoux, et il appuyait longuement ses lèvres sur la bouche fraîche, la baisait à perdre haleine," he kissed her hard, "mais soudain il la mordit is profondémeant qu'une traînée de sang descendit sur sa menton et coula dans son corsage."¹²⁷ He bit her lightly on the neck.

   Barbara clutched the spot. "You'll pay for that!"

   "Je payerai, il se mit à rire," he chuckled.¹²⁸

   "Don't do it again!"

   He explored her body with his hands. "Je n'ai qu'une passion, celle de la lumière, au nom de l'humanité qui a tant souffert et qui a droit au bonheur."¹²⁹

   "Ooh, your French," she cooed. She turned on his lap and straddled him.

   He tried to make his eyes look passionate. "Dalila! Dalila! Je t'aime!"

   "I love your French," she kissed him hard. "It is really turning me on." She pushed down with her loins and felt him. "And you too, apparently."

   "On a raison de remarquer l'indocile liberté de ce membre, s'ingérant is importun´meant," she moved her hips against him, "et contestant de l'authorité is impérieusement avec nostre volonté."¹³⁰ She began to unbutton her blouse. "Dalila, ton cœ ur s'ouvre à ma voix, comme s'ouvrent les fleurs, aux baiser de l'aurore.¹³¹ But Barbara."

   "Yes," she said in a drawn-out sexy voice.

   "I hate to break the mood, but before this goes any further, I need to ask—"

   "Yes, I'm on the pill."

   "Not that. Quelle est l'origine de l'inégalité parmi les hommes? Et dis-moi si elle est autorisée par la loi naturelle."¹³²

   "I have no idea what you asked me."

   "It had something to do with the dictates of nature." His face revealed some discomfit. "I really have to go . . . il faux que je fasse pee-pee."¹³³

   "Oh, of course." She got off him and watched him walk down the hallway. "I'm after you," she called, "so please put the seat down."

   "Yes, Mom."

   "I'm the much younger and prettier aunt—oh fuck! That sounds terrible!"

   Jack's head reappeared from the bathroom, "Language!"

   "Sorry."

   When Barbara exited the bathroom she took two steps toward the living room but heard noise behind. She turned, and seeing a lighted room walked Jack's bedroom, where she saw him busily tossing clothes into dresser drawers.

   "Your French maid had the day," she paused, "or perhaps the month off?"

   He said over his shoulder. "Kind of a mess in here."

   "I can see that."

   "I always left my toys everywhere as a kid," he said while trying to force a drawer closed.

   "And what sort of games do you play in here now, young man? Let me guess. Simon says, or rather Simone says, 'Jacques, take off your pants.'"

   Jack looked over his shoulder at her and winked. He unbuckled his belt, unzipped his fly, lowered his jeans and extended his butt. "Sainct Augustin allègue avoir veu quelqu'un qui commandoit à son derrière autant de pets qu'il en vouloit . . . "¹³⁴ Jack squatted slightly and furrowed his brow feigned effort. A moment later, he shrugged with resignation.

   Barbara crossed the room and let him take her in his arms. She kissed lightly and began unfastening his shirt buttons.

   "Depuis six mois, possédé par mon amour, incapable de soupçonner que ma passion me maîtrisait, reprit le premier ministre."¹³⁵

   "Really? Tell me more."

   Jack buried his face in her neck and recognized the perfume he'd often smelled at the campaign office. "Je me livrais à ces adorables divinisations qui sont et le triomphe et le fragile bonheur de la jeunesse . . . tout mon sang se portait au cœur en respirant sa parfum."

   "Tell me what you really want, Jack," she said with a half-sneer.

   "Je cherche des parfums nouveaux, des fleurs plus larges, des plaisirs inéprouvés."¹³⁶

   "Or should I tell you what I want?"

   "Vous commandez aux esprits . . . je veux comme vous être en commerce avec eux: je le veux, je le veux."¹³⁷

   "Women have needs to."

   "L'homme est né pour le plaisir: il le sent, il n'en faut point d'autre preuve. Il suit donc sa raison en se donnant au plaisir."¹³⁸

   "I'll show you what I want." She reached down to touch him.

   Jack sprang back and cried, "Noli me tangere."¹³⁹

   "That's Italian!"

   "Italien! voilà leur grand mot lâché! avec ce mot, ils ont assassiné, pendu et dévoré Concini."¹⁴⁰

   "If you're not going to make any sense, do it in French."

   "Fiddle-de-dee, Écarlate."¹⁴¹

   "And that's not French either."

   "Who said it was, you woman with the glassy eyes? If you'll tell me what language 'fiddle-de-dee' is, I'll tell you the French for it!"

   "That's from—"

   "Dans l'autre côté du miroir,¹⁴² where 'they'll all be screaming for Fiddle-de-dee,' or so claimed the rhymes of Ingoldsby."¹⁴³

   "You are," she looked at him with amazement, "a lunatic," she smiled sweetly, "but an irresistible lunatic."

   "Madame Bonacieux avait le plus charmant sourire du monde," he told her, while thinking that that character in The Three Musketeers had been married as well.¹⁴⁴ D'Artagnan had found her, as Jack had found Barbara, irresistible. Still, if she were his wife . . . He undid the last few buttons of Barbara's blouse and slipped it from her shoulders. He'd marry someone like that character Blanche. He kissed Barbara on the lips lightly. Her eyes closed. He kissed her lightly again. He'd marry Blanche, "qui avait cette transparence des yeux et du regard, cette sérénité de la bouche qui prouvent que l'âme ne conçoit que de saintes pensées et que les lèvres ne disent que de pieuses paroles."¹⁴⁵ Barbara moaned lightly. Jack reached behind and undid her bra while thinking that Barbara certainly was exquisite but too—what was the word?—too almost desperate, no. She was too ready. But my oh my, she was sexy. He kissed her deeply, licked her lips and tasted a hint of salt. Remember Lot's wife, disobedient, turned into a pillar of salt.¹⁴⁶ Jack undid Barbara's her belt. Someone like Barbara, though, wasn't really for him. Not a long-term investment. She undid her pants and pushed them off her hips. Jack thought of sweet Norwegian Lotte and said, "La petite Lotte pensait à tout et ne pensait à rien."¹⁴⁷ He ran his fingers through Barbara's hair, which made her exhale. "Oiseau d'été, elle planait dans les rayons d'or du soleil."¹⁴⁸ She stepped out of her pants.

   Jack took a step back and said, "Et maintenant, ma reine," he eyed her up and down, "il me reste à faire la perquisition principale."¹⁴⁹

   "Not in such bad shape, if I do say so myself."

   "Lorsque le roi-poète, Uçaf Uddaul, célèbre les charmes de la reine."¹⁵⁰ He caressed her hips. Sa mince et souple ceinture, qu'une main suffit à enserrer, rehausse l'élégante cambrure de ses reins arrondis." His hands rose to feel the heft of her bosom. "Et la richesse de son buste." Feeling self-conscious, Barbara moved closer to him.

   "Kiss me, Jack."

   He looked down into her face and said, "Ta gorge se formait; et quelle gorge! blanche, ferme, taillée comme celle de la Vénus de Médici."¹⁵¹ He kissed her.

   She felt him against him. "Certainly you seem aroused."

   She reached down, pushed his underpants down and took hold him, which made Jack exclaim, "Ithyphalliques et pioupiesques.¹⁵² Oh, le bon temps, que ce isècle de fer!"¹⁵³

   "That's quite a weapon you've—unsheathed."

   "Oui, mais je ne suis pas de la race élue."¹⁵⁴ Jack leapt back and took hold of himself as if brandishing a sword. "Doublez!" He turned it slowly in the air. "Dédoublez!"¹⁵⁵

   "Obviously, you have no idea how to use that thing."

   "Pardieu! J'étudiai avec le maître de l'académie de Toulouse, Monsieur L'Abbat."¹⁵⁶ He made short, quick steps toward her, saying with each, "Dégagez! Un, deux, trois—regarde moi!—plus de six!"

   "You have definitely lost your mind. I'm not sure this is a good idea."

   Jack took her shoulders in his hands. "Rassure-toi, nothing bad will happen. Tu n'en mourra pas: the Princess (that's you) se percera la main d'un fuseau," he tapped the head of his penis, "mais au lieu d'en mourir, elle tombera seulement dans un profond sommeil, au bout desquels le Duc viendra la réveiller."¹⁵⁷

   "But maybe it is time I joined the so-called 'sexual revolution.'"

   "There's always been a sexual revolution. Men have always been in sexual revolt because les Dieux, a dit Platon, nous ont fourni d'un membre inobedient et tyrannique: qui, comme un animal furieux, entreprend par la violence de son appetit, sousmettre tout à soy.¹⁵⁸ Now you women get to join in."

   "My generation certainly wasn't so cavalier about sex."

   Autre temps, autre mœurs."¹⁵⁹

   "Sex was handled differently when I was your age, which wasn't that long ago!"

   "Nous avons changé tout cela, et nous faisons maintenant une méthode toute nouvelle."¹⁶⁰

   "This is not how I thought the evening was going to turn out."

   "Neither did I." He looked at her and said with a serious voice, "Corrompre une femme attachée à son mari, avec la croyance qu'on peut mourir entre ses bras," he put his arm around her shoulders, "et tomber tout à coup dans des supplices sans fin," he led her to the bed, "convenez que ce serait le plus incroyable délire."¹⁶¹

   "This revolution, it doesn't include a lot of outrageously kinky stuff, does it Jack?"

   "Je crois que le goust des biens et des maux depend en bonne partie de l'opinion que nous en avons."¹⁶²

   "What the hell, it's only sex," she said. "No one's running off to get married."

   "Nos projets de mariage furent oubliés à Saint-Denis; nous fraudâmes les droits de l'Église, et nous nous trouvâmes époux sans y avoir fait réflexion."¹⁶³

   "He had his 'fling.'"

   "Ah! la vengeance se mange très-bien froide."¹⁶⁴ She dropped to her knees. He felt the warmth of her mouth. "Or is it the other way around?"

   "Be quiet and enjoy."

   "Ah! dame Suzanne, que vous me faites aise,"¹⁶⁵ said Jack. She purred. Then he spoke in a barely audible voice, "Ah! jeune homme! jeune homme! quelque amourette? Prenez garde, je vous le répète: c'est la femme qui nous a perdus, tous tant que nous sommes."¹⁶⁶ After a while he lifted her and walked her to the bed. She slid between the covers. He looked down and told her, "Elle devenait, en quelque sorte, la déité symbolique de l'indestructible Luxure, la déesse de l'immortelle Hystérie, la Beauté maudite."¹⁶⁷

   "Get down here and keep me warm."

   Jack joined her, snuggling close. Once again he inhaled her perfume. "Dans l'odeur perverse des parfums, dans l'atmosphère surchauffée de cette église—Salomé."¹⁶⁸

   "Jack, come to me."

   As Jack began to roll on top of her he heard the college bells toll and thought: Séguier's bell. He hesitated, lifting an ear and canting his head toward the window he listened.

   "Jack?"

   He looked down at her as the hour continued to ring, and Jack imagined a monk somewhere in time and space roused from his bed, dropping to his knees to pray for his endangered soul. He told her in a quiet tone, "Le supérieur, lui avait recommandé pour conjurer le démon tentateur de recourir à la corde de la cloche et de sonner à toute volée."¹⁶⁹

   "Second thoughts?"

   "Ask not . . . for whom the bell tolls¹⁷⁰ . . . les cordes des cloches sont les cordes des sins pour les corps des saintes,"¹⁷¹ he hesitated, "I was trying to remember the words to a song. Ah, got 'em!" He sang:

The night is young and full of possibilities
Well come on and let yourself be free

   "Do you know it? It's disco by Anita Ward. Jesus, I hate disco, and I'm sure you do too!" He moved on top of her and sang again:

You can ring my be-e-ell, ring my bell
You can ring my be-e-ell, ring my bell¹⁷²

   "Can you sing in French, Jack?"

   "No," he said as he tried to peer deep into her soul, "but I do know that je cherche la région cruciale de l'âme, où le Mal absolu s'oppose à la fraternité."¹⁷³ But Jack suddenly felt unsure. He didn't actually say the words to himself, but he understood that Barbara was another man's wife. What he did say to himself was that old man Connage had the responsibility to look after his wife, and if he didn't, well, whose fault was that, and it was just sex anyway and hadn't she suggested that he'd had a fling as well? All that took but half a moment in Jack's lightening-quick 21-year-old, stickier-than hell, clever brain that had just written a dynamite paper on La Comédie Humaine, which no one back in Great Falls had ever done, probably. "Scènes de la vie privée," he said as he entered her and made love as vigorously as she obviously required.

   "After a while she blurted, "Oh Jack. I've never been here before."

   Which Jack thought was ridiculous. Of course she'd never been here before. And she'd probably never been in a college guy's bedroom; well, not recently. Obviously she'd been in college, but who knew what they got up to back then. Heavy petting. Whoopee! She certainly seemed to know what to do. He told her, "Son amant emmène un jour O se promener dans un quartier où ils ne vont jamais, le parc Montsouris, le parc Monceau."¹⁷⁴

   Jack varied his rhythm and watched her face for signs of pleasure. He admired her body and her . . . "enthusiasm" was putting it mildly. How long had it been for her?

   "Speak to me, Jack," she urged.

   "I was just admiring the view."

   "Sweet!" She grabbed his head and kissed him hard.

   "And thinking about the first day of the semester, the third day of September."

   "Oh, very flattering," she said with disgust.

   "In French, à la terrasse d'un restaurant, le vent s'engouffrait comme par magie sous une nappe faisant danser les verres sans que personne ne s'en aperçoive."¹⁷⁵

   "That's much better," she said and then suddenly pushed him onto his back and rolled on top of him, "but let me drive."

   "Qui tu a mis dans cette position, Barbara? C'est le sacré pigeon?"¹⁷⁶

   "You are naughty!" she said as she came to a complete stop.

   "Elle se penchait vers lui et murmurait, comme suffoquée d'enivrement." She studied his face and then began to move again slowly. "Oh! ne bouge pas! ne parle pas! Regarde-moi!" He tried to engage her tremulous eyes. "Il sort de tes yeux quelque chose de si doux, qui me fait tant de bien!"¹⁷⁷ She cupped her breasts and offered them to him. "Madame, je vous prie bien humblement de m'excuser, mais je ne mange jamais de muscat."¹⁷⁸

   "Your turn," she said, rolling onto her back and keeping him with her. "Don't be shy, Jack, harder."

   "Si un corps se mouvant avec une certaine vîtesse, rencontre un autre corps en repos . . ."¹⁷⁹

   "Harder!"

   Jack said stridently, Le choc est le même que si le dernier corps se mouvant avec la vîtesse du premier, le rencontroit en repos.¹⁸⁰ Try to control yourself, you silly great tart. Where do you think you are, La Ville-Lumière?"¹⁸¹

   Barbara pushed him with a hand on each of his shoulders, bringing him to a halt. "What did you call me?!"

   "Oops, sorry Madame Peignoir. I got carried away, a faulty assumption."¹⁸²

   "I should say."

   "No, I should say something else, Mia Cara! a song, a madrigal,

Se mi non saper dire tante belle rason
Petrarca mi non saper, ne fonte d'Helicon¹⁸³

   The words were not French, but Barbara didn't notice. Jack increased his effort, his rhythm synchronized with words he sang in a guttural tone,

Don, don, don diridiridon don, don, don—Matona, Mia Cara.¹⁸⁴
Se ti mi foller bene mi non esser poltron;
mi ficcar tutta notte, urtar come monton.¹⁸⁵
Don, don, don, diridiridon don don don.

   Barbara's moans increased, and he urged her on. "Le même bredouillement de syllabes se fit entendre . . . 'plus haut! cria le maître, 'plus haut!'"¹⁸⁶

Don, don, don diridiridon don, don, don.

   "Oh Jack!"

   "Chante rossignol, chante! Toi qui as le cœur gai. Tu as le cœur à rire!"¹⁸⁷ Jack watched her face contort with pleasure. "Rossignol, 'tis not through envy of thy happy lot, but being too happy in thine happiness—"¹⁸⁸

   "Almost, Jack. I'm almost there . . ." She wrapped her legs around his waist. "Wait for me! Talk to me!"

   "Si mon heure est venue, elle n'est pas à venir; si elle n'est pas à venir, elle est venue, si mon heure n'est pas venue, elle viendra plus tard, inévitable."¹⁸⁹

   "Keep going! More! Go on!" Her eyes sprung open. "Talk to me!"

   "Moulin Rouge. Crêpe Suzette . . . Chanel numéro cinq!"

   "Oh my god, Jack!"

   "On sait qu'il y a un dieu pour les ivrognes et les amoureux.¹⁹⁰ Ah! réponds à ma tendresse! Verse-moi, verse-moi l'ivresse!"¹⁹¹

   "I'm just about there, Jack!"

   "Le tout est d'être prêt.¹⁹² Barbara, répondez s'il vous plaît."¹⁹³

   "I'm coming! I'm coming!"

   "Mon lard aussi—avec beaucoup de bruit (peu de fruit—j'espère!)¹⁹⁴ Le bonheur des méchants comme un torrent s'écoule!"¹⁹⁵

FIN¹⁹⁶

   Jack lay on his back and felt Barbara's hand on his heaving chest. Once his breathing slowed she rolled up against him, pinched his chin and turned his face toward hers and kissed him.

   "That was nice," she said.

   "He saluted and said, "Je te salue, o vermeillette fante . . . ô bienheuré pertuis."¹⁹⁷

   She looked at him for an explanation but sensed that he wanted to be quiet. After a few minutes she brushed his bangs off his forehead. "What's rattling around beneath those tousled and sweaty locks?"

   "I was thinking about the first day of the semester, the third day of September."

   "That again?"

   He rolled onto his side and faced her. In a quiet voice he said,

un spermatozoïde pourvu d'un chromosome X appartenant à
le Duc de Grande Cascade se détachait du peloton pour
atteindre un ovule appartenant à la séduisante
Barbara . . . neuf mois plus tard . . . rien¹⁹⁸

   "That has the sound of finality to it."

   "Après le déluge, moi,¹⁹⁹ as the king sorta said," he smiled, "et le paradis terrestre est où je suis, as the duke definitely believed."²⁰⁰

   "Sounds smug. Pleased with yourself?"

   "On n'est jamais si heureux ni si malheureux qu'on s'imagine." He kissed her on the nose.²⁰¹

   "Something special, are you?"

   "Le parangon d'amour-propre."²⁰²

   "And very sensual."

   "Sensuel?" He looked dispirited. "L'homme moyen sensuel?"²⁰³ Then he brightened and said, "Don't believe it." He sat up. "Jacques est né coiffé."²⁰⁴

   "Jack is going to make coffee?"

   "Sure. Café après lait." He retrieved his bathrobe from the closet and helped her put it on. Then he took the blanket from the bed and began to wrap himself in it. "Oh, Jack," she pointed to his side. "Did I wound you?"

   "Oh! rien! dit D'Artagnan, une égratignure."²⁰⁵ He wrapped himself in the blanket, took her hand and led her toward the kitchen.

   "You have only yourself to blame, Jack," she said as they entered the kitchen. Barbara walked straight to the window, looked onto the porch quickly, saw nothing but the vague outline of her reflection in the glass, and quickly pulled down the shade. "You give good French."

   "Eh! que diable faisait-elle à sa porte?²⁰⁶ That's very flattering, but it's only

Hyperbole! de ma mémoire
Triomphalement ne sais-tu
Te lever, aujourd'hui grimoire
Dans un livre de fer vêtu . . .²⁰⁷

   "Poetry?" she asked, heading straight to the kitchen window and pulling down the shade.

   "Exactement."

   "Can you tell me what it means?"

   "Impossible."²⁰⁸

   "Hah! You're never at a loss for words."

   He pointed to the coffeepot and said in a robotic voice, "Add water now." His voice natural, "Give me the innards so I can add the coffee." Taking the plastic basket, Jack said, "Even the finest poet in New Hampshire is occasionally struck with what he calls 'simple ignorance.' Je suis une table."²⁰⁹

   "I am a table?!"

   "More comfortable on all fours, are you?"

   She slapped his arm, "So asked the three-legged stool!" He laughed, and she continued, "But still, to be a poet—"

   "Is to be a dreamer. Rêveur, à quoi sers-tu?²¹⁰ Careful with the water! Only to the line on the clear gauge."

   "Do you know any Shakespearean sonnets?"

   "The sticky brain has its limits. Perhaps just a couplet." He crossed his arms and held his chin to think. He took her face in her hands.

So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,²¹¹
I think that I shall never see . . . a poem as lovely as a tree.²¹²

   "You're pathetic, Jack. What makes you so strange?"

   "Le besoin d'être aimé et, pour préciser, le besoin d'être caressé et gâté bien plus que le besoin d'être admiré"²¹³

   Jack inserted the basket in the pot and plugged the unit in. Barbara slipped her arms inside his blanket and said, "Hardly anyone reads poetry nowadays. I blame television."

   "Toutes sortes de gens vont après les poètes, comme après les hiboux vont criant les fauvettes."²¹⁴

   "Ah, someone's hit your re-set button."

   "The closest thing to poetry these days is Simon & Garfunkel. Here's one of their better efforts," he sang, "Jacques, récite ses leçons, comme le font tous les petits garçons."²¹⁵

   "What's it called?"

   "La chanson de Roland."²¹⁶

   "Careful with your French. You'll hit my re-set button." She reached around and grabbed his buttocks. "If you get me turned on again, I just might do anything."

   "Allez! dit Paul à Jeanne," he nodded toward the refrigerator, "obtenez le beurre."

   "Butter?"

   "It's a line from Ultimo Tango a Parigi—not a happy film, not a French tickler—which is why its title is Italian, perhaps."²¹⁷

   "I thought it was depressing." She laid her head on Jack's chest. "The guy's wife has just committed suicide; he's skulking around the apartment; and what do they get up to?"

   "People have their reasons: La sottise, l'erreur, le péché, la lésine, occupent nos esprits et travaillent nos corps."²¹⁸

   "They had animal sex—at best," she said with a tired voice.

   "Et nous alimentons nos aimables remords, comme les mendiants nourrissent leur vermine."²¹⁹

   "Which is 'just sex,'" she said, pulling him closer, "according to you college kids."

   "Sometimes we engage in the old in-and-out with the brain engaged." He stepped away from her and sat at the table. "Have a seat." He looked across the table and said, "Je me suis toujours demandé pourquoi un homme, qui mourrait de honte s'il prenait une pièce d'or, vole la femme, le bonheur, la vie de de l'autre homme sans scrupule."²²⁰

   "Which means what, exactly?"

   "Life is complicated?" They said nothing, listening only to the gurgles and sighs of the percolator. "Aux cœurs blessés l'ombre et le silence."²²¹

   "It was a lot easier at your age, when one could be foot-loose," she extended her foot and rubbed Jack's, "and fancy-free."

   "It's not all beds of roses, or beds of beautiful women named Barbara, you know. Tu dirai-je, ma tante, ce qui cause mon tourment. Papa veut que je raisonne, comme une grande personne. Moi, je dis que les bonbons valent mieux que la raison.²²² Come here." He motioned her and she sat on his knees. "Tout est au mieux—that's what Candide believed.²²³ And if that's too naïve a sentiment, consider what Simone de Beauvoir said: Si je prétendais assumer à l'infini les conséquences de mes actes, je ne pourrais plus rien vouloir."²²⁴

   "Maybe I would, if I knew what she'd said."

   "You know." He pushed her chin up. "There's a French proverb that means that all things, not just the day, have their morning: Il n'y a que le matin en toutes choses. Just don't expect a fairy tale ending like 'Le prince épousa la Belle, qui vécut avec lui fort longtemps, et dans un bonheur parfait, parce qu'il était fondé sur la vertu.'"²²⁵

   "I suppose you're right. What did Scarlet say? Demain is another jour.²²⁶ It's not as though we're going to wind up on the cover of The National Enquirer."²²⁷

   "No, he said with a wry expression, "mais tout, au monde, existe pour aboutir à un livre.²²⁸ Le livre à venir.."^228a

   "Livre—that means book, right?" She looked at him skeptically. "You're not planning on putting me in a book some day, are you? Write about yourself."

   "Votre Jacques n'est qu'une insipide rhapsodie de faits les uns réels, les autres imaginés, écrits sans grâce et distribués sans ordre."²²⁹

   "Just leave-er me out of it, OK? I have enough problems."

   He kissed her tenderly. "Mieulx est de ris que de larmes escrire, pour ce que rire est le propre de l'homme."²³⁰

*         *         *

   Jack sat alone in his car in front of Thompson's Flowers & Gifts, with his eyes closed and his mind drowsy when he heard a tap on the window beside him. He opened his eyes and saw the stern face of a police officer. He smiled half-heartedly, straightened himself, and rolled down the window. The officer studied his eyes and breathed in deeply.

   "Good evening, sir, everything all right?"

   "Yes," stammered Jack. "I'm fine and you?"

   The officer flicked on his flashlight and inspected the back seat while saying, "Have you been drinking, sir?"

   Jack waited for him to make eye contact before answering, "I'm no lawyer, but shouldn't you tell me I have the right to not incriminate myself?"

   "You're not under arrest, sir. Not yet."²³¹

   "True, but you asked me to admit to a crime." The officer bristled. "But never mind all that legal mumbo-jumbo. Utter nonsense. The wife and I watch too many crime-dramas. No, officer, I haven't had a drop. Would you like to smell my breath?"

   "I have already, sir. License and registration." Jack opened the glove box, retrieved the items, and watched him retreat to his car in the side mirror. He felt embarrassed by the flashing blue lights and confessed to himself silently: Oui, mon frère, je suis un méchant, un coupable un malheureux pécheur tout plein d'iniquité.²³² Mais, il faut imaginer Sisyphe heureux.²³³

   Upon his return the officer said, "Everything seems to be in order, sir." He handed over the documents. "I'm sure you already know that in addition to asking you to identify yourself it is my duty to ask you what you're doing here."

   "It's been a long week, with a big project that I just managed to get finished on time. Had to work with the French, and you know what they're like, wearying, so I went out for a drive. I felt a bit tired, pulled over, and lo-and-behold nodded off." He looked up at the cop and said lightly, "Everybody needs a place to rest."

   "Everybody wants to have a home."²³⁴

   "Ah! Nicely put . . . boss. I suppose I should skedaddle back to mine." They looked at each other for a prolonged moment. Jack asked, "Do you remember that George Carlin monologue about baseball? 'In baseball the object is to go home and to be safe. I hope I'll be safe at home!' Do you—"²³⁵

   "I'm a football guy, myself."

   "Of course. Cops should be—no offense intended."

   "None taken."

   "Well, officer, I'll just get a move on, if that's okay with you."

   "Fine, sir."

   "Have a Merry Christmas—or am I only allowed to say 'Seasons Greetings'?"

   "Goodnight, sir. Don't take the long way home."

   That reminded Jack of another song lyric. "If you do," he half sang, "you never see what you want to see . . . take the long way home—Supertramp or was it Sisyphus?²³⁶ He shook his head. "That song will be stuck in my head for days. Crazy how songs do that."

   "Goodnight, sir."

   Jack looked down the empty street and said, "And to all a goodnight."²³⁷

   

ENDNOTES

¹ Opening line to A Visit from St. Nicholas (also known as The Night Before Christmas and 'Twas the Night Before Christmas), a poem first published anonymously in 1823. It is generally attributed to Clement Clarke Moore (1779-1863), although it has also been claimed that it was written by Henry Livingston Jr. (1748-1828).

² Quote from the film Casablanca (1942), the line delivered by actor Humphrey Bogart (playing Rick Blaine).

³ Beatrice Rheiner (played by Lisette Verea) is a character in the film A Night in Casablanca (1946), a Marx Brothers film.

⁴ An adaptation of the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, an illuminated French missal that dates to about 1410.

⁵ "I do not know how many times my mind passed from one sweet illusion to the next" is from the frame-novel Manuscrit trouvé à Saragosse (The Manuscript Found in Saragossa, 1804 edition) by Jan Potocki (1761-1815). It is the closing line to the events that took place on the first day.

⁶ A play on the words to the last line of the poem A Visit from St. Nicholas.

⁷ Lyrics from "Destination Anywhere," a song performed by The Commitments in the film The Commitments (1991).

⁸ Lyrics from "The Witch Doctor" (1958), a song written and performed by Ross Bagdasarian, Sr. (1919-1972) and released under the name David Seville.

⁹ Bruce Springsteen (1949) is the singer-songwriter nicknamed "The Boss" who performed with the E Street Band.

¹⁰ Lyrics from "Hungry Heart" a song written and performed by Bruce Springsteen on his album The River (1980).

¹¹ In Walden (1854), American author Henry David Thoreau wrote "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."

¹² Hubert H. Humphrey (1911-1978), served under President Lyndon B. Johnson as the 38th Vice President of the United States and twice served as a United States Senator from Minnesota. In 1968, Humphrey was the nominee of the Democratic Party in the 1968 presidential election but lost to Richard Nixon.

¹³ Humbert Humbert is the protagonist and narrator in the novel Lolita (1955) by Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977).

¹⁴ Allusion to the poem "Howl" by American poet Allan Ginsberg (1926-1997) published in Howl and Other Poems (1956).

¹⁵ A neutron bomb is a tactical nuclear weapon that releases a large portion of its energy as energetic neutron radiation rather than explosive energy, so it kills people but does not destroy buildings.

¹⁶ Possibly John F. "Jack" Welch, Jr. (1935) the former CEO of General Electric, who acquired this moniker in the 1980s.

¹⁷ Popularly translated as "Let them eat cake," it is the insensitive remark of a French princess regarding the plight of poor peasants, according to Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), who related her comment in his autobiographical Confessions (1769).

¹⁸ "Democracy is also a form of worship. It is the worship of jackals by jackasses." From A Mencken Chrestomathy (1949) edited and annotated by the American commentator on politics and culture Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956).

¹⁹ Pepé Le Pew is a fictional skunk in the Warner Brothers cartoon series Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies.

²⁰ Reininghaus is the surname of two German brothers who founded the Caffè Giubbe Rosse in Florence, Italy, which was well known as a workshop of ideas, projects, and passions.

²¹ The Gibby Ross is named for the Caffè Giubbe Rosse in the Piazza della Repubblica in Florence, Italy. The original is well known as a gathering spot for intellectuals and rebels.

²² "Down on Main Street" is a lyric from the song "Mainstreet" written by American musician Bob Seger (1945) and performed with his Silver Bullet Band on the recording album Night Moves (1976).

²³ "Of fruitless husk and fugitive flower" is from "The Triumph of Time" (1866) by English poet Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909).

²⁴ The italicized words are from the song "Where Have All the Flowers Gone" (1961) by American folk singer Pete Seeger (1919), with additional verses added by Joe Hickerson (1935).

²⁵ "Where Have All the Cowboys Gone" is a song written and performed by American musician Paula Cole (1968) that appeared on her album This Fire and was released as a single in 1997.

²⁶ Harold Roux is an American character of French-Canadian ancestry in the novel The Hair of Harold Roux (1975) by Thomas Williams (1926-1990).

²⁷ "Where are the snows of yesteryear?" is from the poem Ballade (des dames de temps jadis) (Ballad of the Ladies of Yore, c. 1533) by François Villon (1431-c. 1463).

²⁸ "No need for hot pokers: hell is other people" is from the existential play No Exit (1944) by Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980).

²⁹ Les liaisons dangereuses (Dangerous Liaisons, 1782) is an epistolary novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos (1741-1803) originally published in four volumes .

³⁰ Eugene J. McCarthy (1916-2005) was a member of both houses of the United States Congress and a Democratic candidate for the presidency in 1968.

³¹ Connage is the son of Alec Connage, a Hotchkiss graduate and a character in the novel This Side of Paradise (1920) by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940), a graduate of Hotchkiss.

³² Italian for "boss of all bosses."

³³ "One night, I sat Beauty on my knees, and I found her bitter, and I reviled her" is from the poem Une Saison en Enfer (A Season in Hell, 1873) by Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891).

³⁴ Allusion to American songwriter Stephen Stills (1945), who wrote the lyrics to "Carry On," three lines of which are immediately indented.

³⁵ Allusion to the musical album Déjà Vu (1970) by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, which includes Stills' song "Carry On."

³⁶ Words to the song "Carry On."

³⁷ The little dream.

³⁸ La Farce de maître Pierre Pathelin (The Farce of Master Pierre Pathelin, 1465) is an anonymous work. L'Origine du monde (The Origin of the World) is an oil-on-canvas painting by Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet (1819-1877). Its realistic depiction of a woman's vulva was controversial when unveiled in 1866.

³⁹ The question "Where's my good old gang done gone?" is the first line of "The Hundred and Nineteenth Calypso" in Chapter 102 "Enemies of Freedom" in the novel Cat's Cradle (1963) by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (1922-2007).

⁴⁰ American novelist Joseph Heller (1923-1999) parodied Villon's famous line in his novel Catch-22 (1961) by having his protagonist, Yossarian, ask this question.

⁴¹ Scènes de la vie privée is part of Etudes de Mœurs, a volume of La Comédie Humaine, a multi-volume collection of interlinked novels and stories about French society by Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850).

⁴² "Nothing to do, I am a man of wealth, an intellectual, the type who never works with his hands" is from the play Les Mains sales (Dirty Hands, 1948) by Jean-Paul Sartre.

⁴³ "Man is born to think, but pure thoughts tire and oppress him" is a truncated version of a line from Discours sur les passions de l'amour (A Discourse on the Passion of Love, 1652-53) by Blaise Pascal (1623-1662).

⁴⁴ Giacomo Girolamo Casanova de Seingalt (1725-1798) was a legendary Venetian adventurer, author and womanizer.

⁴⁵ Founded in 1891, The Hotchkiss School is an independent, co-educational American college preparatory boarding school in Lakeville, Connecticut.

⁴⁶ Humphrey DeForest Bogart (1899-1957) was a legendary American film star.

⁴⁷ In the novel This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Rosalind (née Connage) Ryder of Connecticut would be the sister of Alec Connage, Sr., who is Barbara's father-in-law. Rosalind married J. Dawson Ryder of Hartford, Connecticut for his money instead of the financially-struggling protagonist Amory Blaine, who she truly loved.

⁴⁸ Madame Anaï s and Séverine Serizy are characters from the film Belle de Jour (1967), which was based on the eponymous 1928 novel by French novelist and journalist Joseph Kessel (1898-1979). Madame Anaï s ran a brothel and employed the married Madame Serizy during afternoons.

⁴⁹ Spanish painter Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828).

⁵⁰ Funny Lady (1975) is a film starring Barbra Streisand (1942).

⁵¹ Gael Greene (1935) is an American food critic who wrote the novel in 1976.

⁵² "Pinball Wizard" is a song written by Pete Townshend (1945) and performed by the English rock band The Who on its rock opera album Tommy (1969).

⁵³ Edward V. Sullivan (1901-1974) was an American entertainment writer and television host best known as the presenter of a televised variety shows called The Ed Sullivan Show, which aired from 1948 until 1971.

⁵⁴ Known as Soœur Sorire (Sister Smile or the Singing Nun), Jeanne Deckers (1933-1985) performed the religious song "Dominique" on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1963.

⁵⁵ Rolling Stone is a United States-based magazine devoted to music, politics and popular culture founded in 1967.

⁵⁶ "Je t'aime . . . moi non plus" (I love you . . . me neither, 1967) is a duet in French written by Serge Gainsbourg (1928-1991) that was written for and sung with Brigitte Bardot (1934), but that version was not released until 1986. In 1969, Gainsbourg recorded a version with his English wife-to-be, Jane Birkin (1946). It reached number one in the UK, but was banned in several countries due to its sexual content.

⁵⁷ All of the children's stories in the Madeleine series by German author Ludwig Bemelmans (1898-1962) begin with, "In an old house in Paris, that was covered with vines, lived twelve little girls in two straight lines . . . the smallest one was Madeline."

⁵⁸ "Unlucky at games, lucky at love" is a French proverb.

⁵⁹ "To win without risk is a triumph without glory is attributed to the French tragedian Pierre Corneille (1606-1684).

⁶⁰ "And the woods, and the mountains, and all of nature / seemed to question with a confused murmur" are two lines from the poem Ecstasy by Victor-Marie Hugo (1802-1885).

⁶¹ "You will console yourself, as I do, by looking up at the sky" is from À la recherche du temps perdu, a semi-autobiographical novel in seven volumes by Marcel Proust (1871-1922). This line is from the first volume, Du côté de chez Swann (Swann's Way, 1913).

⁶² "Not a cloud in the sky, my eyes were plunged beyond the real world" is a truncation of lines from the poem "Ecstasy" by Victor Hugo.

⁶³ "I lived up there in thought, with nothing weighing heavy on my mind, I rose higher and higher until I felt completely at ease" is from the novel Le Médecin de campagne (The Country Doctor, 1833) by Honoré Balzac.

⁶⁴ A talking cricket counsels the protagonist in Le avventure di Pinocchio (The Adventures of Pinocchio, 1883) by Carlo Collodi (1826-1890).

⁶⁵ "'Men,' said the little prince, 'set out on their way in express trains, but they do not know what they are looking for. Then they rush about, and get excited, and turn round and round . . . '" is from Chapter 25 of Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince, 1943), a novella by French aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900-1944).

⁶⁶ "It is not worth the trouble" is from Chapter 25 of Le Petit Prince.

⁶⁷ "I think therefore I am" is from Discours de la Méthode (1637) by René Descartes (1596-1650).

⁶⁸ "Therefore I am unhappy and it is neither my fault nor that of life" is an epigraph attributed to French poet Jules Laforgue (1860-1887) in Three Lives (1909), a collection of three interrelated fictional stories by Gertrude Stein (1874-1946).

⁶⁹ Lyrics from the song "Lady Marmalade" (1974) were written by Bob Crewe and Kenny Nolan; it became a number-one song when performed by the American female pop trio Labelle, who sang it on the recording album Nightbirds (1974).

⁷⁰ "[E]nculer, décharger, godemiché, gougnotte, gousse, soixante-neuf, minette, mimi, putain, bordel. Ces mots-là sont familiers à toutes les petites filles" is translated as "fuck, ass-fuck, ejaculate, dildo, lesbian, pod, sixty-nine, pussy, cute, whore, brothel. These words are familiar to all little girls." It is a list that author Pierre Louÿs (1870-1925) said did not need defining in his Manuel de civilité pour les petites filles à l'usage des maisons d'éducation (Handbook of behaviour for little girls to be used in educational establishments, 1927).

⁷¹ Spoken by Polonius in Hamlet (Act I, Scene 3) by William Shakespeare (1564-1616).

⁷² Pouilly-Fuissé is a French chardonnay.

⁷³ Gomez and Morticia Addams were the parental figures in the American television sitcom "The Addams Family," which aired between 1964 and 1966. The series was based on cartoon characters created by Charles Addams (1912-1988).

⁷⁴ "Paper bag suffices."

⁷⁵ Asile D'Aliénés is the name of the asylum in the film Le Roi de Cur (The King of Hearts, 1966), the theme of which suggests that during war the "insane" are more sane than those who wage war.

⁷⁶ "But according to your reasoning, no crime we commit will cause us to feel remorse" is from the novel Jacques le fataliste et son maî tre by Diderot.

⁷⁷ "And the word below, carved by the same hand of my friend" as well as the next words in French, "It would have been easier to write Fatum (fate)" are from the novel Notre-Dame (The Hunchback of Notre Dame, 1831) by Victor Hugo.

⁷⁸ Khe Sanh was the site of a United States Marine Corps outpost in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War and the scene of major battle in January, 1968.

⁷⁹ Nelson is a Canadian town made famous in part by the relatively large number of Vietnam War draft resisters who settled there. It was the focal point of controversy between 2004 and 2006 when an unsuccessful attempt to erect a bronze statue to them took place.

⁸⁰ An "acte gratuit" is a gratuitous act often undertaken on impulse.

⁸¹ "You are a woman of a certain age" suggests that she may not be in her prime, and "Nothing educates a young man better than an affair with a woman established in society" is taken from A Confession (first distributed in 1882), the autobiography of Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910). The advice was given to him by his otherwise morally scrupulous aunt.

⁸² "Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them" is from Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

⁸³ "I am the man of nature before being one of the community" is from Justine ou les malheurs de la vertu by the Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade (1740-1814).

⁸⁴ "What frauds are decent people" is the theme of the novel Le Ventre de Paris (The Fat and the Thin, 1873) by Émile François Zola (1840-1902).

⁸⁵ Peyton Place (1956) by New Hampshire author Grace Metalious (1924-1964) is a novel concerned with the social mores of a small town.

⁸⁶ "I know, but 'no one may be questioned about his opinions'" quotes Article X of Déclaration universelle des droits de l'homme (Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, originally published in 1789). It is a fundamental document of the French Revolution.

⁸⁷ "Harper Valley PTA" is a country music song written by Tom T. Hall. When performed by Jeannie C. Riley in 1968, it became a major hit because it suggested the hypocrisy of school officials and small-town residents.

⁸⁸ "Stay here or leave, it's all the same" reflects the major theme of the existential novel L'etranger (The Stranger or The Outsider, 1942) by Algerian-French author Albert Camus (1913-1960): it doesn't really matter what one does in an indifferent world.

⁸⁹ From the play Tartuffe (Act IV, Scene 5) by Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (1622-1673), who is widely known by his stage name, Molière. The sentiment here is that "To create a public scandal is offensive, but to sin in private is not a sin."

⁹⁰ From "Roman de la rose," a medieval French poem started by Guillaume de Lorris (fl. 1230) and completed by Jean de Meun (c. 1250-c. 1305). As translated by Dr. Kip Wheeler of Carson-Newman College: Soon as I sally forth to work / Away you start, with smile and smirk / Ready—for some wild prank or game / Whereat your cheeks should burn for shame / Singing aloud like siren sleek— / God curse you with an evil week! [May you have menstruate].

⁹¹ "Welcome."

⁹² "At last, alone!"

⁹³ Alice Ernestine Prin (1901-1953) was a French model for artists, nightclub singer, actress, and painter. Her chosen name was simply "Kiki," but she was also referred to as Reine de la Montparnasse (Queen of Montparnasse). She flourished in, and helped define, the liberated culture of Paris in the 1920s. A daylily was given the name "Kiki de Montparnasse" in her honor.

⁹⁴ The closing chapter of the novella Der goldne Topf. Ein Märchen aus der neuen Zeit (The Golden Pot: A Modern Fairy Tale, 1814) by E.T.A. Hoffmann (1776-1822) has a lily in a pot that represents the love, happiness, and fulfillment of a young couple.

⁹⁵ This is part of the famous "cheese symphony" passage in the novel Le Ventre de Paris by Zola: "And then the different odors appeared to mingle one with another, the reek of the Port Saluts, the Limbourgs, all uniting together in an overpowering explosion of stench."

⁹⁶ The "cheese symphony" continues, not in its original form but as "And yet seemed as though it were not the cheeses but the wicked words of your Duke that diffused this putrid stench."

⁹⁷ The first verse of the poem "La Chimère" (The Chimera, 1837) by Théophile Gautier (1811-1872): "A young chimera at my goblet's brim / Gave sweetest kiss amid the orgy's spell / Emerald her eyes, and to her haunches slim / The golden torrent of her tresses fell."

⁹⁸ This song is from Le Bourgeois gentilhomme (Act IV, Scene 1), a five-act comédie-ballet by Molière: Your lips are made yet more attractive by wetting with wine! Ah! The one and the other inspire me with desire and both you and it intoxicate me. "Let us three—wine, you and me—Swear, my beauty, to an eternal passion."

⁹⁹ "Do I have the grass that sings or the blue bird (of happiness)" is from the first act of the play L'Oiseau bleu (The Blue Bird, first performed in 1909) by Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949). The French composer and conductor Albert Wolff wrote an eponymous opera based upon Maeterlinck's play.

¹⁰⁰ "But she [the grass] doesn't sing" is also from L'Oiseau bleu by Maeterlinck.

¹⁰¹ "I can do without the grass that sings, if necessary; but I must absolutely have the blue bird" is also from L'Oiseau bleu by Maeterlinck.

¹⁰² Brigitte Anne-Marie Bardot (1934) was a French actress who became world-famous after appearing in the controversial film Et Dieu . . . créa la femme (And God Created Woman, 1956).

¹⁰³ In the novel À Rebours (Against the Grain or Against Nature, 1884) by Joris-Karl Huysmans (1848-1907), protagonist Jean Des Esseintes is infatuated with the painting of "Salome (dancing before Herod)" by the French symbolist painter Gustave Moreau (1826-1898).

¹⁰⁴ Achille Jacques-Jean-Marie Devéria (1800-1857) was a French painter and lithographer noted for his erotic depictions.

¹⁰⁵ "Woman was created for our destruction, and from her we inherit all our miseries" is from the novel Les trois mousquetaires (The Three Musketeers, first serialized in 1843) by Alexandre Dumas (père, 1802-1870).

¹⁰⁶ Isabelle Corey (1939) was a French film actress of the 1950s and early 1960s. She appeared in Bob, Le flambeur (Bob the Gambler or Bob the High-Roller, 1956).

¹⁰⁷ September 29

¹⁰⁸ Jo Raquel Welch (née Tejada in 1940) was an American actress, author and sex symbol.

¹⁰⁹ John Curtis Holmes (1944-1988) was one of the more prolific male and well-endowed porn stars of the 1970s and 1980s.

¹¹⁰ "Whatever a speaker is missing in depth he will compensate for in length" is a quote from Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu (1689-1755), a French social commentator and political thinker during the Era of the Enlightenment.

¹¹¹ "They said that he was the lover of the queen Marie-Antoinette between messieurs de Coigny and de Lauzun" and "He lived a life of noisy debauch, full of duels, bets, elopements; he squandered his fortune and frightened all his family" are from the novel Madame Bovary (1857) by Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880).

¹¹² L'homme moyen, or "the average man," is a concept explored in Sur l'homme et le développement de ses facultés, ou Essai de physique sociale (1835) by Lambert Adolphe Jacques Quetelet (1796-1874). Chevre-Feuille is the aviator in Save Me the Waltz (1932), the first novel of Zelda (Sayre) Fitzgerald (1900-1948), wife of novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald. He is based on Edouard Jozan, a French aviator with whom Zelda may have had an affair in 1924.

¹¹³ "I was born into a very ancient family, but one which has achieved very little distinction and acquired even less material wealth" is from Manuscrit trouvé à Saragosse by Potocki, and more specifically "The Story of Alphonse Van Worden," which is told by the protagonist-narrator on the third day.

¹¹⁴ "Le bavard" means the chatterer or the garrulous one. It is a characterization of the protagonist, Jacques, given by the omniscient narrator in Jacques le fataliste et son maître by Diderot.

¹¹⁵ "We were given speech to hide our thoughts" is a quote from Talleyrand (Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, 1754-1838), a French diplomat.

¹¹⁶ "I have been assured, said the Cat, that you have the gift of being able to change yourself into all sorts of creatures you have a mind to; that you can transform yourself into a lion, or elephant" is from Le Maître chat ou le Chat botté (The Master Cat or Puss in Boots) by Charles Perrault (1628-1703), who laid the foundations for what was then a new literary genre, the fairy tale.

¹¹⁷ The beginning to "The Black Mousquetaire: A Legend of France," a poem in The Ingoldsby Legends (1837), which was written by Thomas Ingoldsby of Tappington Manor, the pen-name of Englishman Richard Harris Barham (1788-1845).

¹¹⁸ This is from the British sitcom 'Allo 'Allo! that aired on BBC from 1982 to 1992. One of its primary character was Michelle Dubois, who always wore a trench coat and beret, and who often said "Listen very carefully, I shall say this only once."

¹¹⁹ The French for "words that go together well" are from "Michelle," a song written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney that appeared on The Beatles' recording album Rubber Soul (1965).

¹²⁰ "In art and love, one's instinct is sufficient" is a quote Le Jardin d'Épicure (The Epicure's Garden, 1894) by Anatole France (1844-1924), who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1921.

¹²¹ A song lyric from "Les moulins de mon cœur" written by Alan and Marilyn Bergman and put to music by Michel Legrand. Its English version (The Windmills of Your Mind) won the Academy Award for Best Original Song after appearing in the film The Thomas Crown Affair (1968).

¹²² "Le Diable amoureux (The Devil in Love, 1772) is an occult romance by the French novelist Jacques Cazotte (1719-1792). It tells of a demon (Biondetta) who falls in love with the Spanish protagonist, Alvaro.

¹²³ "The gypsy women of the Sierra Morena are eager to eat the flesh of men" is from the novel Manuscrit trouvé à Saragosse by Potocki.

¹²⁴ "In the center of the portico, in broad daylight, a naked woman was attached to a column" is from the opening section of La tentation de Sainte Antony (The Temptation of Saint Anthony, final version 1874) by Gustave Flaubert. The next entry in French is from the same source: "the smell of cinnamon enveloped her [Ammonaria's] naked body . . . I believe I can recognize Ammonaria," and "No! No! I don't want to think about it!"

¹²⁵ Jack asks himself "Column or pillar?" He then says "She is chained to a pillar beneath a glass globe while twenty starving serpents eat her alive," which is from Les Cent Vingt Journées de Sodome (The 120 Days of Sodom, 1785) by the Marquis de Sade (Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade, 1740-1814).

¹²⁶ "Witness Delilah! You are acquainted with the Scriptures, right?" is a question addressed to D'Artagnan by the captain of the musketeers, M. de Trévillem in Les trois mousquetaires by Dumas.

¹²⁷ "He had taken Rachel on to his knees, and he put his lips in a long kiss on the Jewess's rosy mouth, until she lost her breath; and at last he bit her until a stream of blood ran down her chin and on to her bodice" is from "Mademoiselle Fifi" (1882), a short story in an eponymous collection by Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893).

¹²⁸ "I will pay, he said with a laugh" is a sentiment expressed by the German captain to the Jewish prostitute Rachel in Mademoiselle Fifi by Guy de Maupassant.

¹²⁹ "I have one passion, that of the light, in the name of humanity which has suffered so and is entitled to happiness" is from "J'accuse," (1898) a letter published in the newspaper L'Aurore by the influential writer Émile François Zola (1840-1902). Addressed to the President of France, it accused the government of anti-Semitism and the unlawful jailing of Alfred Dreyfus, a French General Staff officer sentenced to penal servitude for life for espionage. The phrase "j'accuse" has become a common expression of outrage and accusation against a powerful person.

¹³⁰ "People [men] have good reason to notice the unruly liberty of their members [penises], sticking out so importunately" is from is from Les Essais (The Essays or The Attempts, 1580), Book I, Chapter 21 by Michel Eyquem de Montaigne (1533-1592).

¹³¹ "Delilah, my heart opens to your voice as flowers open to the kisses of dawn" is sung by Delilah in Act II of the grand opera Samson and Delilah (Op. 47) by Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921), which is based on Judges 16 of the Old Testament.

¹³² "What is the origin of inequality among men, and tell me, is it authorized by natural law" is the question proposed by the Academy of Dijon and answered by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) in his Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de l'inégalité parmi les hommes (Discourse on the Inequality of Men, 1754).

¹³³ "I really must have a pee."

¹³⁴ "Saint Augustine claims to have seen a man who could command farts from his backside at will" is also from Book I, Chapter 21 of Les Essais by Montaigne.

¹³⁵ "For six months, possessed by my ardor, yet incapable of suspecting that my passion controlled me, as my prime minister," followed by "I devoted myself to this adorable deifications which evidence the triumph and fragile joy of youth" and "all my blood rushed to my heart when I inhaled her perfume" are sentiments expressed by de Marsay in the novel Autre étude de femme of La Comédie humaine (Another Study of A Woman, 1842) by Honoré de Balzac.

¹³⁶ "I seek new perfumes, larger blossoms, pleasures still untried" spoken by the Chimera in the novel À rebours by Joris-Karl Huysmans.

¹³⁷ "You command the spirits . . . I want to interact with them, that's what I want, that's what I want" is from Le Diable amoureux by Cazotte.

¹³⁸ "Man is born for pleasure; he feels it; no other proof of it is needed. He therefore follows his reason in giving himself to pleasure" is from Discours sur les passions de l'amour (Discourse on the Passion of Love, 1652-53) by Blaise Pascal (1623-1662), a mathematician, physicist, and Catholic philosopher.

¹³⁹ "Do not touch me" are Latin words attributed to Jesus Christ while addressing Mary Magdalene (John 20:11-17).

¹⁴⁰ "Italian! that is their scathing word of reproach, the byword they followed when they assassinated, hanged, and devoured Concini" is from Vingt ans après (Twenty Years Later, first serialized in 1845), a novel by Alexandre Dumas (père).

¹⁴¹ Écarlate is French for the color scarlet, and Scarlett is the character in the novel Gone With the Wind (1936) by Margaret Mitchell (1900-1949) who frequently dismissed what she didn't want to hear with "fiddle-de-dee."

¹⁴² Dans l'autre côté du miroir is the French title of Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871), a work of children's literature by Lewis Carroll, the pen name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-1898).

¹⁴³ From "A Row in the Omnibus (Box)" in The Ingoldsby Legends by Barham.

¹⁴⁴ "Madame Bonacieux had the most charming smile in all the world" is from Les trois mousquetaires by Alexandre Dumas (père).

¹⁴⁵ "[Blanche] had that transparence of eyes, that serenity of the mouth, which indicates a soul that conceives only holy thoughts and lips that repeat only pious words" is from the novel La Dame aux camélias (The Lady of the Camellias, 1848) by Alexandre Dumas (le fils, 1824-1895), which has been adapted into the play Camile. It was also the basis for La Traviata (1853), an opera by Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901).

¹⁴⁶ Lot's wife is turned into a pillar of salt because of her disobedience, according to Genesis 19:26.

¹⁴⁷ "Little Lotte thought of everything and nothing" is from Le Fantôme de l'Opéra (The Phantom of the Opera, first serialized as "Le Gaulois" in 1909-1910), a novel by Gaston Leroux (1868-1927).

¹⁴⁸ "Her hair was as golden as the sun's rays and her soul as clear and blue as her eyes" is a description of Lotte in Le Fantôme de l'Opéra by Leroux.

¹⁴⁹ "And now, my queen, it remains for me to make the principal examination" is from Les trois mousquetaires by Alexandre Dumas (père).

¹⁵⁰⁹ "When the poet-king, Uçaf Uddaul, celebrates the charms of the queen" is from Le tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours (Around the World in 80 Days, 1873), a novel by Jules Verne (1828-1905). The description continues with "her narrow and supple waist, which a hand may clasp around, sets forth the outline of her rounded figure" and "and the beauty of her bosom."

¹⁵¹ "Your breasts were formed; and what breasts they are! white, firm, like those of the Venus of Medici" is derived from the novel Candide, ou l'Optimisme (1759) is a satiric novel by Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet, 1694-1778).

¹⁵² "Standing phallic and soldier-like" is from the poem "Le cœur supplicié (The Tortured Heart) published in Poésies (1870-1871) by Arthur Rimbaud.

¹⁵³ "Oh what a wonderful time is this age of iron!" is originally from the poem "Le Mondain" (1736) by Voltaire. It is quoted by the narrator "William Wilson," in the eponymous short story by Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849).

¹⁵⁴ "Yes, but I'm not of the chosen [Jewish] race" is a line from Du côté de chez Swann by Proust that originally read "Yes, I am of the chosen race."

¹⁵⁵ This and the following exclamations are all French fencing terms. The sequence "Doublez! Dédoublez! Dégagez! Un! Deux!" can found in The Ill-Made Knight (1940), which is contained in the collection The Once and Future King (1958) by T.H. White (1906-1964).

¹⁵⁶ The Art of Fencing: The Use of the Small Sword (1734) is a book by Monsieur L'Abbat of the Academy of Toulouse.

¹⁵⁷ "Assure yourself . . . you will not die . . . [the Princess] will pierce her hand with a spindle; but, instead of dying, she shall only fall into a deep sleep, at the end of which the Duke will come and awaken you" is adapted from La Belle au bois dormant (Sleeping Beauty) by Charles Perrault.

¹⁵⁸ "The gods, said Plato, have provided us with a disobedient and tyrannical member, which like a furious animal, tries to use its voracious appetite to subject everything to its will" is from Les Essais by Michel de Montaigne.

¹⁵⁹ "Other times, other customs (mores and values)" is a French proverb.

¹⁶⁰ Médecin Malgré Lui (Act II, Scene VI) is play by Molière written in 1666. The first clause, "we changed all that," has become a common and facetious reproof to dogmatic and dictatorial prigs with contempt of old customs.

¹⁶¹ "To seduce a wife who is in love with her husband, with the knowledge that if one died in her arms he would instantly fall into the eternal torments of hell—that would be crazy" is a truncated quote from Jacques le fataliste et son maître by Diderot.

¹⁶² "I believe that the taste of good and evil depends in large part on the opinion we have of them" is an adaptation of the title to Book 1, Chapter 14 of Les Essais by Michel de Montaigne.

¹⁶³ "Our plan to marry was forgotten at St. Denis; we defrauded the Church of her rights; and found ourselves united as man and wife without reflecting on the consequences" is from the novel L'Histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut (Manon Lescaut, 1731) by Antoine François Prévost, known as Abbé Prévost (1697-1763).

¹⁶⁴ "Revenge is very good eaten cold" is from the novel Mathilde (1841) by Marie Joseph Marie Eugène Sue (1804-1857).

¹⁶⁵ "Ah, Madame Suzanne, you make me feel wonderful" is from Jacques le fataliste by Diderot. In that novel, Jacques is mis-speaking his lover's name as is Jack.

¹⁶⁶ "Ah, young man, young man, what passing fancy is this? Take care. I repeat, take care. Woman has ruined us, still ruins us, and will continue to ruin us" is from Les trois mousquetaires by Alexandre Dumas (père).

¹⁶⁷ "She became, in a sense, the symbolic deity of indestructible lust, the goddess of immortal Hysteria, of accursed Beauty" is a description of Salome in the novel À rebours by Joris-Karl Huysmans.

¹⁶⁸ "In the perverse odor of the perfumes, in the overheated atmosphere of the temple, Salomé" is from À rebours by Joris-Karl Huysmans.

¹⁶⁹ "His Superior advised him, in order to conjure away the tempting demon, to have recourse to the bell rope, and ring with all his might" is from Les trois mousquetaires by Alexandre Dumas (père).

¹⁷⁰ "Therefore, send not to know / For whom the bell tolls, / It tolls for thee" are the closing lines to the poem "For Whom the Bell Tolls" by John Donne (1572-1631).

¹⁷¹ A homophonic use of words echoing the "Fourth Book of Pantagruel" (1552) by François Rabelais (1494-1553), which is contained in La vie de Gargantua et de Pantagruel (The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel), a connected series of five novels.

¹⁷² "Ring My Bell" was written by Frederick Knight and became a popular disco song in 1979 when it appeared on the album Songs of Love by Anita Ward (1956). Its appearance here is chronologically incorrect.

¹⁷³ "I seek that essential region of the soul where absolute evil confronts brotherhood" is from the novel Lazare (1974) by André Malraux (1901-1976). The quote appears as an epigraph to the novel Sophie's Choice (1979) by William Styron (1925-2006).

¹⁷⁴ "One day her lover took O for a walk in a section of the city where they never go—the Montsouris Park, the Monceau Park" is the opening line to the novel Histoire d'O (The Story of O, 1954) by Pauline Réage, the nom de plume of Anne Desclos (1907-1998).

¹⁷⁵ A transposed adaptation of the narrator's dialogue in the film Amélie (2001): "on a restaurant terrace, the wind magically made two glasses dance unseen on a tablecloth."

¹⁷⁶ "Who put you in this position, Barbara? The sacred pigeon?" is an adaptation of a question posed in French in the novel Ulysses (1922) by James Joyce (1882-1941).

¹⁷⁷ "Elle se penchait . . . qui me fait tant de bien!" is from the novel Madame Bovary (Part III, Chapter 5) by Flaubert: "She bent over him, and murmured, as if choking with intoxication: 'Oh, do not move! do not speak! look at me! Something so sweet comes from your eyes; it satisfies me so much!'"

¹⁷⁸ "Madame, excuse me but I never eat Muscatel grapes" is from the novel Le comte de Monte-Cristo (The Count of Monte Cristo, 1844) by Alexandre Dumas (père).

¹⁷⁹ "If a body moves with a certain speed and encounters a second body at rest," is the introduction of a scientific observation made in Les Lois du mouvement et du repos déduites d'un principe métaphysique (Derivation of the laws of motion and equilibrium from a metaphysical principle, 1744) by Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis (1698-1759).

¹⁸⁰ The quote "the impact would be the same as if the second body, moving with the speed of the first, had collided with the first body at rest" concludes the observation by Pierre Louis Moreau de Maupertuis.

¹⁸¹ An adaptation of a dialogue in the episode "The Wedding Party" of the British sitcom Fawlty Towers, which aired in 1975.

¹⁸² Madame Peignoir is a Parisian resident in the hotel Fawlty Towers.

¹⁸³ "Though I do not know so many elegant phrases, and know nothing of Petrarch, or the fountain of Helicon" is from the madrigal "Matona, Mia Cara" by Orlando di Lasso (1532-1594), a Franco-Flemish composer of the late Renaissance.

¹⁸⁴ These syllables are intended to replicate the rhythm of making love.

¹⁸⁵ "If you'll have me, I'm no laggard, I'll make love to you all night long, thrusting like a ram" is from "Matona, Mia Cara" by di Lasso.

¹⁸⁶ "The same mumble of syllables was heard . . . 'Louder!' cried the [school] master, 'louder!'" is from Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert.

¹⁸⁷ "Sing, nightingale, sing! Your heart is so happy. Your heart feels like laughing!" is from "À la claire fontaine" (At the Clear Fountain), a children's song.

¹⁸⁸ From "Ode to a Nightingale" by John Keats (1795-1821).

¹⁸⁹ This is a French translation of Hamlet (Act V, Scene II) by William Shakespeare: "If it be now, tis not to come; If it be not to come, it will be now; If it be not now, yet it will come."

¹⁹⁰ "It's well known that drunks and lovers have a protecting god" is from Les trois mousquetaires by Alexandre Dumas (père).

¹⁹¹ "Ah! respond to my tenderness! Fill me with ecstasy!" is the first verse of the aria "Mon cœur s'ouvre à ta voix" ("My heart opens itself to your voice") in the grand opera Samson et Delilah (Op. 47) by Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921). It is sung in Act II by Delilah.

¹⁹² The next line from a French translation of Hamlet (Act V, Scene II): The readiness is all.

¹⁹³ "Répondez s'il vous plaît," (RSVP) is a formal request to "Respond please" to a social invitation.

¹⁹⁴ The saying "Beaucoup de bruit, peu de fruit" is described as a French proverb by the English philosopher and statesman Francis Bacon (1561-1626) in his essay "Of Vain-Glory" as meaning "much hope, no fruit." Its use here indicates that Jack is in the throes of a loud orgasm but hoping that he doesn't produce offspring.

¹⁹⁵ "The happiness of the wicked rushes like a mountain stream" is from Du côté de chez Swann by Proust.

¹⁹⁶ "The End" is the usual closing to a French film.

¹⁹⁷ This French is taken from the first and third lines of a sonnet by Pierre de Ronsard (1524-1585). The first translates "I salute you, oh petite red slit" and the second "oh blessed sluice."

¹⁹⁸ A corruption of the narrator's dialogue in the film Amélie (2001): "a sperm with one X chromosome from the Duke of Great Falls raced toward an egg of the sexy Barbara . . . nine months later . . . nothing."

¹⁹⁹ The original French attributed to the King of France Louis XV (1710-1774) was "Après moi, le déluge," which has been transposed to "after the deluge (the orgasm), me."

²⁰⁰ "Earthly paradise is where I am" is the last line of the poem "Le Mondain" (1736) by Voltaire.

²⁰¹ From Réflexions ou sentences et maximes morales (Maxims, 1665) by François VI, duc de La Rochefoucauld, prince de Marcillac (1613-1680), the forty-ninth maxim of which suggests that one is never as happy or as sad as one appears.

²⁰² "The paragon of self-love" with 'self-love' meaning something more than simple narcissism: it ranges from the need for admiration to conceit to even neurotic self-involvement.

²⁰³ The average non-intellectual man.

²⁰⁴ The phrase "né coiffé" describes someone who is born to good fortune, someone born with a silver spoon in their mouth.

²⁰⁵ "It's nothing but a scratch!" is from Les trois mousquetaires by Alexandre Dumas (père).

²⁰⁶ "But what the devil was she doing standing on the doorstep?" is from the novel Jacques le fataliste et son maître by Diderot.

²⁰⁷ From the poem "Prose pour des Esseintes" (1885) by Stéphane Mallarmé (1842-1898), which is considered one of most enigmatic creations.

²⁰⁸ Impossible.

²⁰⁹ "Je Suis Une Table" is a poem by Donald Hall (1928).

²¹⁰ "Dreamer, of what use are you?" is from the first verse of "Le Poète et la Foule (The Poet and the Crowd), a poem by Théophile Gautier (1811-1872).

²¹¹ From "Sonnet 18," which is popularly known as "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?" by Shakespeare.]

²¹² The opening lines to the poem "Trees" (1914) by Alfred Joyce Kilmer (1886-1918).

²¹³ "The need to be loved; more precisely, the need to be caressed and spoiled much more than the need to be admired" is the answer provided by Proust when filling out a confession album in 1890, the respondent identifying the principal aspect of his or her personality.

²¹⁴ "All sorts of persons run after poets, as warblers fly shrieking after owls" is from the novel Notre-Dame by Hugo.

²¹⁵ The song is not written by the folk-rock duo Simon & Garfunkel; rather, it is an adaptation of the theme song to the French television show "Babar." The French means "Jacques [instead of Babar) recites his lessons, as do all the little boys."

²¹⁶ A facetious answer, The Song of Roland is the oldest surviving French literature.

²¹⁷ In the film Last Tango in Paris (1972), the character Paul tells Jeanne to "get the butter" in order for them to have anal sex.

²¹⁸ "Ignorance, error, cupidity, and sin possess our souls and exercise our flesh" is from the first verse of the introductory poem "Au Lecteur, in Les Fleurs du mal" (The Flowers of Evil, 1857) by Charles Pierre Baudelaire (1821-1867).

²¹⁹ "Habitually we cultivate remorse, as beggars entertain and nurse their lice" is the completion of the first verse of Au Lecteur in Les Fleurs du mal by Baudelaire (1821-1867).

²²⁰ "I have always asked myself how it is that a man who would die of shame if he took a gold coin that did not belong to him, does not scruple to rob a friend of happiness and life and the woman he loves" is from Le Médecin de campagne by Balzac.

²²¹ "For wounded hearts . . . shadow and silence" is the epigraph to the novel Le Médecin de campagne by Balzac.

²²² "Ah! I shall tell you, mum what causes my torment. Papa wants me to reason like an adult. Me, I say that candy is worth more than reason" is a modern version of the children's song "Ah! Vous Dirai-Je, Maman" dating from 1761.

²²³ "Everything is for the best" is from the novel Candide by Voltaire.

²²⁴ "If I pretended to assume all the consequences of my acts, I would never do anything I wanted to do" is from the first philosophical essay of Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986), Pyrrhus et Cinéas (Pyrrhus and Cineas, 1944).

²²⁵ "The Prince married Beauty, who lived with him for a long time in perfect happiness, because their marriage was based on virtue" is the closing line to La Belle et La Bête (Beauty and the Beast) by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont.

²²⁶ "Tomorrow is another day" is the philosophical outlook of protagonist Scarlett O'Hara at the end of the novel Gone With the Wind by Martha Mitchell.

²²⁷ The National Enquirer is an American supermarket tabloid founded in 1926.

²²⁸ "Everything in the world exists in order to be put in a book" is from Variations sur un sujet, Chapter VI—Le Livre, Instrument Spirituel (1895-96) by Stéphane Mallarmé.

^228a Le livre à venir (The Book to Come, 1959) is a collection of essays by Maurice Blanchot (1907-2003), a philosopher and literary theorist.

²²⁹ "And your Jacques is only one insipid rhapsody of facts, some real, others imagined, written about with no grace and parceled out in no particular order" is the narrator's characterization of the protagonist, Jacques, and the novel itself in Jacques le fataliste et son maître by Diderot.

²³⁰ "Better to write of laughter than of tears, for laughter is the essence of mankind" is from La vie de Gargantua et de Pantagruel by François Rabelais.

²³¹ Right given under the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

²³² Tartuffe (Act III, Scene VI): "Yes, brother, I am an evildoer, a guilty man, an unhappy sinner, full of iniquity."

²³³ "But one must imagine Sisyphus happy" is from Le Mythe de Sisyphe (The Myth of Sisyphus, 1942) by Albert Camus.

²³⁴ "Everybody needs a place to rest. Everybody wants to have a home" are consecutive lines in the song "Hungry Heart" written and performed by Bruce Springsteen.

²³⁵ A monologue contained in the book Brain Droppings (1997) by George Carlin (1937-2008), an American stand-up comic and social critic.

²³⁶ "Take the Long Way Home" is a song from the recording album Breakfast in America (1979) by Supertramp, a British progressive rock band that released a series of top-selling albums in the 1970s and early 1980s.

²³⁷ The poem "The Night Before Christmas," which is attributed to both Clement Clarke Moore and Henry Livingston, ends with St. Nicholas proclaiming, "Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night."