This is the first chapter of the second volume of Pierre Drieu la Rochelle’s masterpiece Gilles. You can read the first volume for free on our website.
In their little dining room between empty walls, several people dined with Gilbert and Antoinette de Clérences.
Mrs Florimond watched her goddaughter with mixed feelings that admitted admiration for her fleeting beauty, like a domesticated animal dreaming among humans, and annoyance at her increasingly pronounced nonchalance that relegated everyone present to far away, beginning with her husband. What did she want?
The old woman, so set in her ways became sometimes perplexed; she did not understand these youngsters she she would meet at her son’s parties.
She was not even sure of her son. She had pushed him to marry Antoinette, the daughter of Maurice Morel, whom he had met at Myriam Gambier’s place, a little before his father became President of the Republic, and she thought that he had done it as much for taste as for ambition. But God knows how he treated that ravishing little girl and how quickly he’d led her to infidelity. What morals in this new generation! In Madame Florimond’s time there had only seemed to be a direct and robust gallantry. But now, all these shenanigans. Did Gilbert suffer from his wife’s indiscretions? He’d wanted it that way, and now he regretted it. So why did he feign such complete indulgence?
Gilles had been her second or third lover, was she still sleeping with him? No, because now he was with an American, according to rumours, the wife of a diplomat. Antoinette seemed to miss him, that evening; she looked at him from time to time with her tired air of covetous anomy. Gilles did not respond to these glances and often seemed elsewhere, although he talked a lot. He drank even more.
How he had disappointed Mrs Florimond, that boy. After the war, he had lived another two years with Myriam, completely neglecting her, chasing tramps, only coming home to improvise debauched parties, slumming with just about anybody, getting enormously drunk, and humiliating both Myriam and himself.
Myriam had ended up taking a lover, and he had finally left her, with an air of surprised outrage. He was still at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs where he had completely squandered the opportunity by alienating everybody. He had exhausted Berthelot to whom he had taken the liberty of writing privately to express his ideas on global politics. After he had flunked his civil service exams, Berthelot had kept him around in la Presse. One had to wonder why.
Gilles, across the table, had, with Gilbert, the most ridiculous opinions about politics. Mrs Florimond asked herself, sometimes, how her son could possibly be truly ambitious, the way he carried on. True, the follies of youth are temporary, and returning from the war he had to make up for lost time. Besides, he had too much money. Antoinette Morel had given him some, but above all he had inherited practically the entire fortune of old Clérences, who had died of congestion in the middle of a committee. That money was dwindling.
Gilbert had initially maneuvered very skillfully and quickly. He was a Radical deputy and in the good graces of Chanteau, the future Head of State. He still maneuvered; but was making for himself a very bad reputation within political circles. On first impression, he astonished and seduced, but behind his back, he was ridiculed as insolent and pretentious. He was too much of a dandy, too much a wastrel, his wife too beautiful, with an ugly apartment, a loud social climber who surrounded himself with extravagant people. Not to mention the orgies he involved Antoinette in.
What would become of all this? Would he be able to self-discipline? Or be carried away by all these jumbled ideas that danced around him?
“Cyrille will bring Caël soon”, Antoinette announced.
Voilà, now she was fraternizing with this Caël, a sort of charlatan who had made a name for himself in Montparnasse.
Mrs Florimond asked with a discrete tone, a little dry:
“What are this Mr Caël’s beliefs? I tried to get him to explain them to me, but I confess that I didn’t understand a thing.”
Gilbert de Clérences looked at his mother with an amused expression:
“You see too many academics.”
“I’m all for sound minds.”
“You didn’t ask this question to Cyrille?” interjected Gilles.
Cyrille Galant was the second son of Madame Florimond. She had had him as naturally as the first, but to a vice-president of the Senate who, married and a family man, had not been able to recognize him as Mr de Clérences had done for Gilbert.
He was not her favourite and she gave little worry to his upbringing. All the same, the boy had shown the most brilliant qualities. He had been immediately accepted to Normale after the war, but had not entered and had instead thrown himself into a restless bohemianism.
He was vaguely the secretary of some writer and a close acquaintance of Caël. He was with him, after him, at the head of a bizarre group who called themselves Révolte, whose loud activities remained incomprehensible to Mrs Florimond. Was it literature? Politics?
Leaving the table, one passes through the hallway which was almost as naked as the dining room. In a revolting austerity, no more than two or three cubist sketches could be seen on the immense walls. Mrs Florimond saw Ruth, an old friend of Myriam Gambier, arrive. Ruth, who was not pretty, had married the son of a hideous rabbi, who was following her around in tow that evening. Why invite Jews? No good could come of it.
When Sarrazin, the musician, entered, Mrs Florimond, relieved, threw herself on him. He was the only one of her selon who frequented Gilbert’s. Sarrazin knew everybody. He roamed through the nights of Paris like a manic watchman, at once distracted and attentive, snarling and affectionate.
After some time, Mr de Guingolph, the old boss of Gilles Gambier at the Ministry, approached Sarrazin and began to avidly interrogate him about Caël, whose arrival was causing such commotion.
Mr de Guingolph, who had often frequented Gambier’s salon, was determined to invite himself to the Clérences’s home. Initially, on account of the burgeoning notoriety of Clérences and his importance with Chanteau, who could become on any given day either Head of State or minister of Foreign Affairs; secondly, for the palpable sense of scandal that could be almost felt, as much for the morals as for the ideas. His restless and masochistic conservative nature compelled him to chafe against all new trends. He wielded his sensitive mentality against the most painful ideas, as he liked to put it, and since the war it had become riddled with wounds.
“Caël is an artist and a prophet”, quiped Sarrazin.
Mr de Guingolph listened to Sarrazin with great respect, since he knew him to be the favorite beau of two or three duchesses and well positioned in Mrs Flormond’s salon, whose doors he hoped with nervous apprehension she may finally deem fit to open for him that evening.
Mr de Guingolph snickered:
“A religion in our day.”
Sarrazin, who had been eyeing, since the start of the evening, the plenipotentiary minister’s macaroon, to the point that Gilles had whispered to him “you like pastries too much,” but who did not like gossip, explained with a careless tone:
“Our contemporaries are as stupid as they seem. This one believes he’s God or the Pope...”
He paused for a second to allow Mr de Guingolph to snort with laughter.
“… and he believes in his religion like a village priest.”
“Enough, my dear monsieur Sarrazin, don’t keep me waiting. What is this religion?”
“What do you want me to tell you? You have heard talk of the apostles and the Pentecost…”
Mr. de Guingolph grimaced and Sarrazin feared he had gone too far:
“I’m allowing myself this comparison because you seem a bit skeptical.”
“Not at all, I’m a good Catholic.”
Sarrazin coughed and continued:
“Well then! The apostles received on this day the gift of the Holy Spirit. Immediately, they had the ability to speak in every language. You can imagine this Berlitz school gone mad. A hundred and twenty interpreters, hurled…
“A hundred and twenty?”
“Counting the disciples, there were a hundred and twenty minds in that academy. Caël changed all that: him and his disciples have received the gift of speech, but not in any human language.”
He stopped, and Mr. de Guingolph again grimaced at the sphinx-like pose that the other affected. Sarrizan resumed:
“In other words, Caël has abolished syntax, logic, discourse. He has invented frantic speech, secular ecstasy, atheistic inspiration. In his congregation, the adepts enter into a trance and erupt with incoherent words, which are recorded by stenographers, immediately printed and considered as gospel. It is, if you like, the general strike of the mind. Incidentally, Caël’s group is called Révolte.”
He hoped to frighten, but Mr. de Guingolph took the blow with heartily. He, who feared revolution, finally reassured himself in seeing that the looming catastrophe was nothing less than the End of the World, a cataclysm so complete that all his fear disappeared and left in it’s place a sort of mocking intoxication.
After a moment, he looked at Sarrazin with a radiant glow and said to him:
“That’s splendid, explain in to me in more detail.”
Sarrazin furrowed his brows, thinking “yet another victory for the avant-garde.”
“You can guess,” he ventured, “Caël has heard it said that genius is accompanied by madness. He concluded that, if he was mad, he would be a genius. Or that, at least, if all the world were mad, that troublesome question of genius would no longer exist.”
He stopped, displeased. Mr de Guingolph resented his irony and was clearly siding with Caël. “If I need a favour from the Foreign Ministry I’m all set.”
However, Mr de Guingolph spoke through gritted teeth:
“Go on, go on.”
“I’ve nothing more to add.”
He suddenly forgot Mr. de Guingolph and was filled with rage at these newcomers to literature.
“They haven’t invented anything,” he exclaimed, “they are simply dervishes, dervishes without Allah. And that’s all it is, the avant-garde, modern literature.”
“And their politics?”
“They’re either anarchists or communists.”
“Oh!”
Finally, Mr. de Guingolph shuddered. Assuredly, the Revolution scared him more than the End Times.
Sarrazin had a keen ear, as necessary in a diner party as a forest clearing; but he had not noticed Cyrille Galant, who had arrived a moment earlier without Caël, sneaking up on him like wolf. Galant, suddenly standing before him, spoke in a dry voice:
“Sarrazin, you are a traitor to poetry.”
Sarrazin turned around, terrified; he feared the attack.
“Not at all,” he stammered.
“We’ll that’s wonderful,” continued Galant, turning towards Mr de Guingolph who immediately offered him a mad complacent smile.
Sarrazin tried to recover, in vain.
“At parties, you know, you have to simplify things.”
Too occupied by Galant, he paid no mind to the probable anger of Mr de Guingolph, whom he avoided looking at.
“Simple, there is the word you have given yourself. I hope that your music is better than that.”
“My music salutes you.”
With this feeble riposte, Sarrazin distanced himself from Galant and Mr de Guingolph, who was admiring the pure white brow of this impertinent young man.
“Mr Caël didn’t come with you, as you’d promised?”
“No, he didn’t want to.”
“What little I understand of your ideas, monsieur, interest me greatly.”
Galant didn’t glance at him for more than a second.
“How about that,” he replied; then he let his pale eyes wander over Clérences’ salon.
Approaching Galant, a large fellow with heavy heavy shoulders said to him:
“What are you looking at?”
He asked, not without irony, which threatened Galant as much as anybody else. Galant shifted his clear gaze: the man might discern in him a hint of contempt and touch of covetousness. It was essential for Galant to dominate everything that came at him with the appropriate means, and it did not seem to him that this one would be too difficult. It was never too difficult with anybody. “And Gambier, who told me I have an enemy. He is no more my enemy than he is his friend. This brute is very feminine.”
“What am I looking at? Everything, naturally.”
“You’re eyeing the furnishings,” ribbed the large heavy boy who’s name was Lorin, Grégoire Lorin
He offered Galant a complicity in feigned indulgence, disdain, and even contempt for the studied elegance of the great studio. He was not encouraged by Galant, who was quite willing to exploit such baseness, but only in his own time. He often watched his sister-in-law, Antoinette. She was tall, silent, somber, and as elusive as a cat. He could interpret her indolence as disdain for her husband and mother-in-law. Did her disdain extend to contempt? Was she contemptuous of her father, the President? And Gambier, who had been her lover?
Grégoire Lorin was clearly the most aggressive in this studio, where jabs and barbs were being exchanged on all sides. He called out brusquely to Galant who, incidentally, was waiting for the counter-attack.
“You know, what you do in your group seems entirely harmless to me, childish.”
Galant barely chuckled. Lorin however, wanted his iron to be felt.
“Oh, but I’m not joking! And I still find that you are miserably deceiving everyone around you.”
At this word “miserably,” Galant blinked, his eyelids drooping towards Lorin’s large, greedy lip, which twisted helplessly beneath a very flat, very thin upper lip. The absence of something cut across that face. The absence of what? It mattered little to Galant who knew only that it gave him an upper hand over this fat moron, who clumsily groped his antennae towards him.
He quipped:
“So, you’re into politics, Lorin.”
Lorin liked to be called by his name. It granted him a minimum of notoriety
“I am not ‘into politics.’ That’s the problem, your group is ignorant of the things that are most important to understand. I’m a Marxist. Marxism, that’s what you are ignorant of. It has nothing to do with ‘politics.’”
Lorin continued even more enthusiastically:
Marxism, it’s much more than what you understand by ‘politics,’ I assure you. It’s there that you’ll find the revolution, not in charades of your “Révolte” group.
Gilles, who was listening to Clérences from the other end of the workshop, occasionally cast curious glances at the two men. He finally went over to them and asked Galant:
“Is he bothering you?”
“Finally…”
Gilles made no secret of his contempt for Lorin who, for his part, smiled at him with an amiable hatred. Galant noted the ready-made betrayal between the two friends. How could it have been otherwise between two men? But, with Caël, he shared a demonic complicity far beyond the painful difficulty of human feelings.
Gilles had been drinking and was still drinking. Galant neither drank nor smoked: which seemed calculated to Gilles. He, on the other hand, was at that time of day when he renounced all calculation.
Gilles asked:
“Caël isn’t here?”
“No, he didn’t want to come.”
“He has a prejudice for cafes. He thinks the cafe is more serious than the salon. Prejudice. It’s all the same.
“Idiot.”
“There is the cafe and there is the coffee” responded Lorin, “I was telling Galant that their idea of revolution makes me laugh. There is no revolution outside of Marxism.”
Gilles replied:
“There is no revolution at all.”
Lorin watched Gambier with furious constraint.
“You know very well what I think of this historical moment,” he conceded. “Since 1923, since the failure in Germany, the chances of a world revolution have diminished. Capitalism is once again in a period of prosperity. But when the historical moment…”
Gilles, looking at Galant, exclaimed in a derisive tone:
“The historic moment… Oh, this jargon! I wonder if there is a moment that isn’t historic.”
Lorin turned to Galant like a referee. The referee signaled with a rather long silence the advantage of his position, then he let it slip:
“Moscow seems like a rather suspicious place to me.”
Lorin was quite outmatched faced with these two, who were more astute than he was. But his pride was thick-skinned; lacking talent, he could at least place his pride in his faith.
“Naturally, at the moment, Moscow is suspicious; but the moment will pass.”
“Just a moment longer,” Gilles continued, his tone more serious. “From moment to moment, centuries will pass and you’ll still be waiting for your revolution. How convenient.”
“Waiting…”
“Yes, waiting, you admit it…”
“While waiting, the work that I do…”
“What work do you do?” Gilles interrupted, with a wounded tone.
“I do my little work,” grumbled Lorin.
Lorin had only recently joined the Communist Party, after having been for a long time a simple sympathizer.
Galant watched the two friends with perverse amusement. Gambier always displayed the deepest contempt for Lorin, who hated him, and yet they saw eachother often; he had even made him his closest confidant, and at this very moment, when he was treating him in the most unpleasant way, something in his gesture and voice betrayed an involuntary affection. This pleased Galant, who, spurred on by Freud and all the whispers of the time, believed he could sense lasciviousness simmering beneath the surface of all relationships.
“Your little work,” sighed Gilles.
He knew of Lorin’s incoercible laziness, which he hid behind all sorts of rendez-vous and clandestineries, and the forceful propensity towards mediocrity that allowed this giant to live comfortably in a world of dwarfs.
Lorin, wide-eye’d, retorted:
“My little work is just as good as that of your friends.”
Caël’s group lived in an incredible idleness. Lacking money and women, refusing work, with the meager education of their time, clinging to a few extreme and obscure ideas, they were always about twenty strong under Caël’s strange domination. Was there anything there but a frenzied taste for destruction and deprivation? Gilles, while avoiding too frequent and too close a contact to provoke his boredom and disgust, followed with curiosity, through Galant’s words, the contortions of this den of vipers. Lorin was jealous. But Gilles saw that jealousy could easily give way to coquetry.
“All your little stories are of no interest,” Lorin continued.
At the word “little stories,’ Gilles sneered. The schemes of these agitated weaklings mere minor. Galant, for his part, had recounted a few that had disheartened him because they gave him a feeling of disheartening powerlessness in the most incredible excess of words. At the moment, they were preparing one that nevertheless seemed to him to have a graspable significance, and he was caught up in the reverie that had drawn him back to Révolte; their total intellectual rot would gradually expose this degenerate world in which he had been feverishly languishing since his return from the war.
After a rather long and obscure diatribe, Lorin concluded:
“All your stories, they’re the stories of feds.”
“Fed,” that word stirred a distant echo in Gilles’s mind. He remembered hearing it during his first brawl in the Latin Quarter. Suddenly, someone had shouted from a group, “He’s a fed!” The group had rushed at an individual. In an instant, Gilles had read on a contorted face the chilling reflection of human ambiguity.
What were the hidden designs of this unbridled ambition that was Galant? His mouth twisted a little, but, higher up, his pure and delicately modeled brow remained unclouded.
“You seem to have a very limited vocabulary,” Galant simply said, who was a hundred leagues away from considering himself insulted by a Lorin.
He was pleased to see Lorin second-guessing himself; he could seize him in a moment, thanks to this slight remorse.
Gilles half-turned on his heels. He met Antoinette’s gaze. Gilles’s face hardened; he was no longer susceptible to Antoinette’s beauty, if he ever truly had been, and he hadn’t approached her since his arrival. He glanced anxiously toward Clérences, who was frowning while affecting the most cordial detachment.
Gilles, who loved another woman violently, did not like to remember how this household had caused him to stumble into such a feeble web of sentiments.
At that moment, Paul Morel, the President’s son and Antoinette de Clérences’ brother, entered.
Mrs Florimond was always troubled by the appearance of a member of the Morel family. She had seen the great advantages for her son in marrying into politics, and the most important one; but soon jealousy had been stronger than calculation. She had envied Mrs Morel terribly, who was so beautiful and whose beauty resisted age so well. She had quickly given up trying to force herself, even though she knew so well how to do it, and had not visited her daughter-in-law’s parents. Besides, the Morels were no longer of any use to Gilbert, quite the contrary.
Gilbert had tied his fate to Chanteau, leader of the Radical Party. However, since Mr. Morel had become President of the Republic, he had used all his limited authority to prevent Chanteau from coming to power, considering him too left-wing. Gilbert had broken loudly with his father-in-law and tried to make a name for himself among the Radicals with this outburst.
Antoinette could well get divorced now. However, Mrs Florimond, who had a certain left-wing passion and who, because of this, hated Mr Morel almost as much as Mrs Morel, did not dislike the fact that their daughter was still living as a hostage among their enemies. She rejoiced to hear Antoinette mock l’Élysée and disappoint her parents with her behavior and her words.
Mrs. Florimond also looked upon young Paul Morel with satisfaction. Like his sister Antoinette, this eighteen-year-old boy was ashamed of the role his father played at l’Élysée and was ready to throw himself into the arms of his enemies.
Gilles, who was well aware of this, nevertheless feared that this sensitive young man might be disconcerted by his friends’ abrupt remarks. These fears were unmet. Galant was very attentive to the young man, who expressed his unbridled joy at meeting him.
However, Gilles affected, avoiding Antoinette, to be interested only in Clérences, with whom he resumed the discussion about the Revolution that he had begun with the others. It was difficult to corner Clérences, who, advancing slowly and cautiously through life, was firm only in the pursuit of his parliamentary interests. Very ignorant beneath a thin veneer, and no less distrustful, ideas offered him nothing but uncertainty; he cared little about revealing this weakness in a gratuitous debate. However, to spread the feeling around him of his possible audacity, he allowed himself, from time to time, some verbal digression on a particular point. This did not satisfy Gilles, who was not enlightened and sought, with some naivety, to understand the character of this other upcomer.
“The Revolution, why not?”
“You don’t say. What revolution are you talking about?” exclaimed Gilles, which made Galant, Lorin, and Paul Morel prick up their ears. “If you became a Radical deputy, it is to immediately seize power. What does that have to do with a revolution like the communist revolution, which requires endless preparation, keeping you away from power for a long time, and probably forever?”
The others snickered and moved closer.
Clérences had meticulously trained himself in public meetings to respond to all interruptions, especially those that deeply annoyed him. With the amused tone of a man of action relaxing among dreamers, he responded:
“But one never governs as well as after a revolution.”
“Bravo,” Gilles rejoiced, immediately swept up in this diversion. “Each revolution refuels the tyranny that men demand. The old powers are the least burdensome, only they disgust us.”
Clérences considered Gilles a charming oddball, whose traits could be dangerous, as they pierced through people’s attitudes, but also sometimes beneficial, as they broadened his narrow political horizons.
Gilles added, excited and ready to strike in all directions:
“That is why these gentlemen here should speak of revolution rather than Révolte, for they have an unbridled taste for tyranny.”
Galant gave a cynical smirk.
Lorin always took a phrase literally.
“Tyranny,” he exclaimed, “there are no greater enemies of tyranny than Marxists. Marx wants the abolition of the state.”
Everyone burst out laughing.
“I think it’s a thorn in my side,” Galant finally hissed through his teeth, “what you’re saying, Gilles.”
“Of course. Your group is based solely on a passion for tyranny. You have only one idea, which is to blind people and lead them off a cliff. What better way to prove your power than by destroying people? Destruction is the height of tyranny.”
“All this shows great weakness,” Mrs. Florimond suddenly interjected, looking at her youngest son in the most disparaging way.
At this, Paul Morel, who had not yet said a word, but who fixed an idolatrous gaze upon Galant, exclaimed:
“Why are you all talking about the tyranny to come? It is a question of the tyranny of now. We hate it, we want to destroy it, at any cost, regardless of the means.”
Gilles turned to him dreamily, then back to Galant.
“Even if that means tyranny.”
Galant regarded Paul Morel with satisfaction: once again, his authority was doing its work. He sensed in him a diabolical self-confidence, a consuming cynicism that would take him far. This summit would be nothing if, from there, he could not overwhelm everyone. He would first overwhelm Gilles, who was rich or had been rich, who was popular with women and whom Antoinette had been looking at a moment ago; and he would overwhelm Clérences, that heir, that demagogue for calm times. Soon it would be necessary to use little Morel, who found himself in a useful position in society.
Mrs Florimond also seemed very struck by the President’s son’s intervention. He hated his father even more than Antoinette did. This could soon be exploited when it came to defeating Morel and driving him from the Presidency.
Gilles was no less surprised by Paul Morel’s joke. It revealed a kind of passion in this frail young boy that he had not suspected. However, he wondered aloud:
“It’s about indulging one’s passions and nothing else. The result is always disastrous, from a rational point of view.”
Mrs Florimond looked at him with contempt.
“Oh you, what wouldn’t you say to please Cyrille?”
“I’m not saying this to please Galant,” he continued with childish confusion, seeing the gleam in all his friends’ eyes. “I’m saying this because it’s what I believe. But,” he added bitterly, “Galant will never admit it.”
He knew that Galant was forever closed to any confession. Galant gave him a charming and ironic look. “Come on,” the look said, “we’re no longer eighteen years old, philosophizing about the meaning of life. Do you think I’m going to fall into the trap and throw down my weapons?”
“What tyranny are we talking about?” Antoinette suddenly asked, who never seemed to speak except to punctuate her long, indifferent silences.
Hearing herself speak, she jerked.
“I don’t think anyone is thinking about your father,” Mrs Florimond ventured, glancing briefly at Antoinette and then at Paul Morel.
Paul’s small, soft face tensed.
“My father is the servant of tyrants,” he murmured, looking at Galant with passion, with a feeble, pleading passion.
Lorin advanced toward him with his pedantic fury.
“What you say is perfectly true: your father, like all politicians without exception, is an agent of capitalism.”
“Oh, without exception!” laughed Clérences.
Clérences and Lorin were old comrades-in-arms. The more Lorin knew people, the more grievances he had against them; but, having no taste for solitude, he attached himself to them through his grievances as others attach themselves through sympathy. So he shouted to Clérences, with a huge laugh:
Yes! You, you’re worse than the others because you’re left-wing, and the most devious kind of left-wing... But, anyway, I haven’t given up on you yet.”
There was an abyss of malicious ulterior motives in these last words: one could immediately see Clérences maneuvering in the approach of a revolution.
Antoinette looked at her brother with horror. She detested politics, but her nonchalance allowed her to endure an environment that enveloped her in the blackest boredom. Provided she had the help of a few exceptional individuals. And now her brother, with whom she loved to joke about trivial matters, was becoming like other men. Gilles, who had seduced her with his apparent lightheartedness, had already disappointed and mortified her in this way. Fortunately, she could always fall back on the charms of her own body; she was a cat reveling in herself amid the dreary lives of humans. But she still had to find men to make love to her.
Galant approached her. He had not known her for long, and he only visited her brother because of her. He envied his brother for her. Until tonight, although he had constantly watched her, he had never spoken to her directly.
Standing a little apart, he said to her:
“They talk about revolution, but the only interesting thing to do is to go down into the street with a revolver, and firing blindly into the crowd, until everyone is dead.”
These were Caël’s words.
She looked at him gratefully. She did not see his words as a serious challenge, but rather as an amusing break from any pretense of giving life a definite meaning.
A moment later, he said again:
“Destruction is the only way to reach unknown and wonderful places.”
Antoinette wondered what he was like in bed; in any case, such remarks, breaking the atmosphere that usually weighed on her, gave her a kind of voluptuous relief.
He had a charming forehead, so white.
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