It’s because the waters of the City are so contaminated; they’re positively heaving with microbes; but I have yet to find a really good water that suits me, that satisfies me. So much so that I sometimes go thirsty.’

Then I felt curious to know what the psychologist and the symbolist would be eating that night; the menu was written in red ink on slivers of ivory placed beside each setting. It began respectably enough with classic Marennes oysters, then came artichoke and carp roe soup … 

‘Is that good?’

Jacinto gave a bored shrug:

‘Oh, yes … not that I ever have any appetite myself … well, I haven’t for a long time, not for years.’

All I could make of the next dish was that it contained chicken and truffles. Afterwards, his gentlemen guests would be savouring a venison fillet marinated in sherry and served with walnut jelly. And for dessert, iced oranges in ether.

‘Why in ether, Jacinto?’

My friend hesitated and made a rippling gesture with his fingers as of an aroma being wafted away.

‘It’s a new thing. Apparently the ether develops and brings out the soul of the fruit.’

I bowed my ignorant head and murmured to myself:

‘This is true Civilisation!’

And as I walked down the Champs-Elysées, bundled up in my overcoat and pondering that symbolic dish, I considered the coarseness and backwardness of Guiães, where, for centuries, in all the orange groves that shaded and perfumed the valley from Roqueirinha to Sandofim, the souls of oranges had remained undiscovered and unused inside their succulent segments! Now, thank God, in the company of a great connoisseur like Jacinto, I would come to understand the true refinement and power of Civilisation.

And (as a still better aid to my friendship) I would see that rare thing, a man who had not only conceived an idea of how Life should be, but had actually realised that Idea, and through it and because of it, achieved perfect happiness.

Jacinto truly was the Prince of Great Good Fortune!

III

At No. 202, at nine o’clock each morning, when I had drunk my hot chocolate and was still in my slippers, I would go into Jacinto’s room. There I would find my friend duly bathed, shaved and frictioned, wearing a white robe – fashioned from Tibetan goatskin – and seated at his dressing-table (made entirely of glass for fear of microbes), which was crammed with those utensils of tortoiseshell, ivory, silver, steel and mother-of-pearl so vital to nineteenth-century man if he is to play his part in Civilisation’s sumptuary harmony and not disgrace it. The brushes in particular never failed, each morning, to amaze and delight me, for they came in all shapes and sizes: as large as the wheel on a Sabine chariot; as narrow and curved as a Moor’s scimitar; concave, like a rustic roof tile; pointed, like an ivy leaf; some with hair as stiff as boar’s bristles and others as soft as pigeon down! Like a master who scorns none of his slaves, Jacinto faithfully used all of them. And thus, gazing into a mirror framed with silver leaves, my Prince would spend fourteen minutes brushing his hair with those other creatures’ hair.

Meanwhile, behind the brocaded silk screens from Kyoto, Cricket and another valet would be manipulating, with skill and energy, the various implements of the washroom – a miniature version of the Bathroom and its monumental machines, which were No. 202’s greatest marvel. Amid all the marble there were just two spouts graded from zero to one hundred degrees; two showers, one gentle and one more vigorous (the latter for washing one’s hair); a spring of sterilised water for cleaning one’s teeth; a bubbling fountain in which to shave; and then there were discreet buttons which, at the slightest touch, could unleash jets of water, singing cascades or a light summer dew. From this dread place – in which all that violent, boiling water was kept disciplined and enslaved in some alarmingly slender pipes – Jacinto would finally emerge, drying his hands first on a soft towel, then on a linen towel, then on a towel made of plaited cord to stimulate his circulation, and finally on a soft silk towel to burnish his skin. Once this ritual was over, Jacinto, sighing and yawning and recumbent on a divan, would leaf through his diary, in which were listed, in Cricket’s hand or his own, the day’s duties, often so numerous that they covered two whole pages.

All these duties had to do either with his social life, with his highly complex sense of civilisation, or with the interests nurtured by my Prince over the past seven years in order that he might live in more conscious communion with the City’s many functions. (Jacinto was, in fact, president of the Fencing and Shooting Club; a shareholder in the newspaper Le Boulevard; a director of the Telephone Company of Constantinople; an associate of the United Bazaars of the Spiritualist Arts; a member of the Committee for Initiation into Esoteric Religions, etc., etc.) It seemed, however, that none of these occupations gave my friend any pleasure at all, for, despite his usually mild, harmonious manner, he would often – in the rebellious gesture of a free man – hurl to the floor the diary that was enslaving him. On one such morning (of wind and snow), when I picked up the oppressive book – bound in kid leather in a tender tone of faded rose – I learned that, after lunch, Jacinto had to make a visit to Rue de l’Université, another to Parc Monceau, and yet another to the remote groves of La Muette; then, as a matter of loyalty, he had to vote in an election at his club, accompany Madame d’Oriol to an exhibition of fans, choose an engagement present for the niece of the Trèves family, attend the funeral of old Count de Malville, and preside at a court of honour over a matter of alleged cheating by some gentlemen playing écarté. Above and in between these entries were further notes scribbled in pencil by Jacinto: Coachman – Five o’clock tea with the Efraims – The girl from the Théâtre des Variétés – Deliver letter to the newspaper … I looked at my Prince. Lying stretched out on the divan, his eyes closed in despair, he was yawning a vast, silent yawn.

But Jacinto’s obligations began in No. 202 itself, immediately after his bath. From eight o’clock onwards, the telephone bell kept ringing and ringing impatiently, almost angrily, like someone summoning a tardy servant.

Still barely dry from his bath and still wearing his Tibetan goatskin robe or his thick plush old gold pyjamas, he was also constantly going out into the corridor to hold whispered conversations with men who were in such a hurry that they did not even have time to put down their sopping umbrellas, which dripped onto the carpet. One of the most frequent visitors (doubtless someone from the Telephone Company of Constantinople) cut a most alarming figure. Gaunt, swarthy and with bad teeth, he was always carrying the same fat, grimy folder under one arm and wore the collar of his mangy fur coat turned right up, so that his small, sinister, predatory eyes seemed to be peering fiercely out from the entrance to his lair.