Marthe Chenal sang the Marseillaise at the Opera House. Well, what do you want? We need things like that to keep our spirits up. Civilians need that.’

‘We’re young,’ said Renée, ‘we need to take our minds off things.’

She looked at Détang and smiled brightly, provocatively. She and her mother had always dreamed of finding her a rich husband. But the war was wreaking terrible havoc with the men. ‘Soon, it won’t be a question of choice. It will be like it is at the butcher’s: since August, you had to take whatever you could get,’ Madame Humbert had said with a disillusioned sigh, as she sewed her hats beneath the lamplight every evening. ‘Soon a lad like Détang, with no fortune and no prospects, a nobody, will seem like a good bargain, just as long as the war agrees to send him home with at least one arm or leg.’

‘He’s not stupid,’ Renée would say to her mother, ‘he’s only as enthusiastic as necessary. It’s very odd: he never gets carried away. He gets everyone else to speak. He does talk a lot but he never actually says anything. He’s got a true Southern personality. He told me that if he makes it through this war he wants to go into politics, and it’s not a bad idea for him. He could be successful.’

‘Yes,’ her mother replied, ‘but you must be very careful and not give in to him at all. He’s the kind of man who only gets married as a last resort. I know the type: your father was just the same.’

Now she turned to Madame Jacquelain. ‘Don’t forget about business here in Paris. Businesses have to thrive. Women are starting to think about their clothing again, thank goodness. I’ve designed a gorgeous new style of hat. It’s inspired by the times: it’s a policeman’s hat. Very elegant looking and all the rage. It has an embroidered insignia, a piece of braid and a gold tassel, or even feathers and a rosette; no one will wear anything else this winter.’

Amid the hum of the conversations, the little clock on the mantelpiece, with its silvery tones, very quickly, shyly, struck three times. It was time for everyone to go. Martial stood up, trembling. Since he was leaving the next day, he wouldn’t be seeing his family and friends again. The kisses and handshakes began; Madame Jacquelain quietly begged Martial: ‘If my son is sent to the front lines, you’ll look after him, won’t you?’ (She imagined the front was a kind of lycée where the older boys could defend and protect the younger ones against the unfair attacks of the Germans.) Monsieur Jacquelain spoke in his deep, hoarse voice: ‘You’ll think of me …’, for during dinner, he had made sure to get some medical advice from Martial and made him promise to prepare a diet for his stomach troubles ‘as soon as he had a free moment’.

Martial nodded and nervously pulled at his beard, where a few grey hairs were already beginning to show. Thérèse had stood up with him.

‘I don’t often have any free time over there,’ he pointed out gently.

But Monsieur Jacquelain refused to believe it:

‘There are surely quiet moments; you can’t be operating all the time. It would be impossible for anyone to do that. In the newspapers, they report there are very few sick people and that the wounded heal very quickly, thanks to their good morale.