‘Because I’ve had no dinner you know, not a crumb! Well, one eats so badly at Chez Joseph! I don’t know why anyone bothers to dine there at all? Whenever I come to Paris, I ask: “Where’s the best place to dine now?” And everyone tells me: “Chez Joseph”. Nonsense! Today, for example, they were serving snipe! Absolutely foul! They haven’t the faintest notion how to cook snipe!’

His rather murky blue eyes glinted and grew wide with indignation.

‘Paris is losing all its finest qualities. One can’t dine well anywhere in Paris nowadays!’

Around him, the other guests all glumly nodded their agreement. The Count de Trèves defended Le Bignon, where they still kept up the noble traditions. And the editor of Le Boulevard, leaning towards His Highness, attributed the decadent state of cooking in France to the Republic, to the crude democratic taste for cheapness.

‘At Paillard’s you can still …’ began Efraim.

‘At Paillard’s!’ thundered the Grand Duke. ‘But the Burgundy there is appalling, simply appalling!’

He let his arms hang limp and dejected by his side. Then he carefully smoothed the lapels of his tailcoat and, with the slow rolling gait of an old sea captain, went over to greet Madame d’Oriol, every part of whom seemed to glitter: her smile, her eyes, her jewels, each fold of her salmon-pink silk dress. However, no sooner had the pale, soft creature begun to chatter, fluttering her fan like a bright bird’s wing, than His Highness noticed the Theatrephone positioned among some flowers on a table, and he summoned Jacinto:

‘In communication with the Alcazar by any chance? A Theatrephone, is it?’

‘It certainly is, sir.’

Excellent! Perfect! He had regretted having had to miss Gilberte singing that new song ‘Les Casquettes’. Half past eleven! That was just the time she was due to sing it in the final act of La Revue Électrique! He clamped the two ‘receivers’ from the Theatrephone to his ears and stood there, engrossed, an earnest frown on his stern face. Suddenly, he issued a command:

‘It’s her! Sh! Come and listen. It’s her! Everyone, come over here! Princess, you too! All of you! It’s her! Sh!’

Then, since Jacinto had been so prodigal as to install two Theatrephones, each equipped with twelve lines, all the ladies and gentlemen present hurriedly pressed a receiver to one ear and stood, motionless, enjoying ‘Les Casquettes’. The faded pink salon and the Library filled with an august silence, and I alone remained disconnected and instead stood idly by, my hands in my pockets.

On the monumental clock, which marked the time in all the capitals of the world and the positions of all the planets, the delicate hands fell asleep. Like some icy, melancholy sun, the Electricity blazed down on the silence and on the pensive immobility of all those backs and all those décolletages. From each attentive ear, cupped by a hand, hung a black wire, like a piece of intestine. Dornan, slumped across the table, had closed his eyes, like a fat monk at his meditations. The historian of the Dukes d’Anjou was gravely performing his palace duty, delicately holding the ‘receiver’ between the tips of his fingers and holding his sad, sharp nose aloft. Madame d’Oriol was smiling languidly as if the wire were murmuring sweet-nothings in her ear. To stir myself, I risked taking one timid step, but was immediately halted by a fierce ‘Sh!’ from the Grand Duke. I withdrew behind the curtains to hide my idleness. The psychologist and author of The Cuirass was standing some way from the table, the long wire drawn taut, and he was biting his lip in the sheer effort of concentration. Reclining in a vast armchair, His Highness was in seventh heaven. Beside him, Madame Verghane’s bosom rose and fell like a milky wave. And my poor Jacinto, ever conscientious, was bent over the Theatrephone as sadly as if it were a tomb.

Confronted by this vision of superior, civilised beings devoutly and silently drinking in the obscenities Gilberte was bleating down the line at them from beneath the soil of Paris, through wires buried in the gutters, close by the sewers, I thought about my sleeping village. The same crescent moon accompanied by one tiny star that was racing through the clouds over the rooftops and the black chimneys of the Champs-Elysées would also be racing over the pine woods there, but shedding a softer, brighter light. Far off in the deeps of the Dona, the frogs would be croaking.