‘Going to the Bois’ became, then, an act of conscience for my Prince. And he would return, proudly asserting that the City still had all its planets, thus guaranteeing the eternal nature of its light!

Now, however, it was only apathetically and reluctantly that he would accompany me to the Bois, where, taking advantage of the mild April weather, I would try vainly to satisfy my longing for large groves of trees. While Jacinto’s groomed and glossy horses proceeded at a leisurely trot along the Champs-Elysées and the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne – the latter rejuvenated by the tender grass and the cool green of new shoots – Jacinto, blowing his cigarette smoke out of the open windows of the coupé, remained a good and amiable companion with whom it was pleasant to philosophise as we crossed Paris. However, as soon as we had passed the gilded gates of the Bois and entered the Avenue des Acacias and joined the long line of elegant carriages and cabs, and the decorous silence – broken only by the squeak of brakes and the slow crunch of wheels over sand – my Prince would fall silent and shrink back into the cushioned interior of the coupé, rarely opening his mouth except to give a wide, world-weary yawn. Faithful to his old habit of verifying the comforting presence of ‘the personnel, the planets’, he would still occasionally point out another coupé or victoria creaking past us in another slow line and murmur a name to me. Thus I came to know the curly Hebraic beard of the banker Efraim; the long patrician nose of Madame de Trèves which gave shelter to her perennial smile; the flaccid cheeks of the Neoplatonist poet Dornan, who sat, chest puffed out, in some hired fiacre; the long, dark Pre-Raphaelite locks of Madame Verghane; the smoked glass monocle of the editor of Le Boulevard; the triumphant little moustache of the Duke de Marizac, enthroned in his war-like phaeton; the various fixed smiles, Renaissance goatees, drooping eyelids, prying eyes, and powdered skin, which all belonged to one or other of my Prince’s illustrious friends. When we reached the top of the Avenue des Acacias, we would start back down again, at a restrained trot, crunching slowly over the sand. In the sluggish line of carriages still driving up the avenue, chaise upon landau, victoria upon fiacre, we would inevitably see again the dark monocle of the man from Le Boulevard, the fiercely black locks of Madame Verghane, the prominent chest of the Neoplatonist poet, the Talmudic beard, in short, each and every one of those same figures, motionless as waxworks, and all too familiar to my friend Jacinto – figures he had passed and re-passed every afternoon, year after year: always the same smiles, always the same face powder, always the same wax-like immobility. At this point, Jacinto, unable to contain himself any longer, would shout to the coachman:

‘Home, and make it quick!’

And the horses – feeling as exasperated as Jacinto by the soporific pace enforced on them in the Bois, with brakes always squealing, and in the company of other mares whom they, too, knew far too well – would positively gallop back down the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne and the Champs-Elysées.

I would occasionally test Jacinto by speaking ill of the Bois:

‘It’s not as much fun as it used to be. It’s lost its glow.’

And he would venture timidly:

‘No, no, it’s very pleasant; what could possibly be more pleasant, it’s just that …’

And he would blame the cool afternoon breeze or the tyranny of his many obligations. We would return then to No. 202, where, sure enough, Jacinto would soon be wrapped once more in his white robe, and where, seated at the glass dressing-table before his legions of brushes, with all the electric lights on, he would begin to adorn himself for that evening’s social duties.

It was on just such a night (a Saturday) that we experienced, in that safest and most civilised of rooms, one of those violent and ferocious terrors that can only be produced by the wildness of the Elements. It was getting late (we were to dine with Marizac at the club before accompanying him to a performance of Lohengrin at the Opera) and Jacinto was hurriedly tying his white tie, when, in the washroom, either because a pipe had burst or because a tap had come unsoldered, the hot water suddenly started pouring forth in a furious torrent, smoking and steaming. A dense mist of steam dimmed the lights and, lost in that mist, we could hear, amid the screams of Cricket and the valet, the devastating rush of water beating against the walls, splattering everything with a scalding rain. Beneath our feet, the sodden carpet turned to burning mud. And as if all the forces of Nature, hitherto subordinated to Jacinto’s service, were rising up and taking courage from that watery rebellion, we heard dull snarls coming from inside the walls and saw threatening sparks springing from electric cables! I had fled into the corridor where the thick mist was spreading. No. 202 was filled by the tumult of disaster. At the front door, attracted by the clouds of steam escaping from the windows, I found a policeman and a crowd of other people. And on the stairs, I bumped into a reporter – hat pushed back on his head, notebook open – asking urgently if there had been any deaths.

Once the water had been tamed and the mist had cleared, I found a grey-faced Jacinto dressed only in his underwear, standing in the middle of his room.

‘Oh, Zé Fernandes, all our hard work! And we’re powerless, powerless! This is the second such disaster we’ve had! And we’d installed new machinery, put in place a whole new system …’

‘Well, I’ve been well and truly drenched by your new system! And that was my one and only tailcoat!’

Around us, the fine embroidered silks, the Louis XIII brocatelles – all covered in black stains – were still steaming. My Prince, pale with shock, was wiping dry a photograph of a very décolletée Madame d’Oriol. I was thinking angrily how different things were in Guiães; there the water was heated in nice, safe saucepans and brought up to my room by the sturdy Catarina in nice, safe jugs! We did not dine with the Duke de Marizac at the club. And at the Opera – pinched and oppressed as I was in the tailcoat lent to me by Jacinto and which cut into my armpits and gave off a befuddling whiff of Flowers of Nessari – I did not enjoy Lohengrin with his white soul, his white swan and his white armour.

Very early next day, Cricket – whose hands, badly scalded on the previous evening, were bandaged in silk – came into my room, drew the curtains, sat down on the edge of the bed and, with his usual radiant smile, announced:

‘We’re in Le Figaro!’

He triumphantly opened the newspaper. So magnificently and so publicly did our waters roar and gush through twelve lines in the society column that I too smiled delightedly.

‘And the phone, Senhor Fernandes, hasn’t stopped ringing all morning,’ exclaimed Cricket, his ebony skin aglow.