Martial went to see his friend, the doctor, who was still living there. After saying goodbye to him, he stopped on the staircase, took the plaque out of his pocket and polished it until it gleamed. Then he tiptoed back up the stairs, held it against the wooden door for a moment, tilted his long neck even further to the side and thought: ‘That’s really nice’, and began to daydream. There was a polished oak bench on the landing; the windows were made of coloured glass and their reflection covered the stairwell in translucent light, as in a church. Martial imagined a procession of patients arriving to consult Doctor Brun. ‘That excellent Doctor Brun …’ he whispered softly, ‘Martial Brun, that famous doctor … Do you know Doctor Brun? He cured my wife. He removed my daughter’s adenoids.’ He could almost smell that odour of antiseptic and clean linoleum wafting out of his consulting room. No more studying! He had earned his diplomas! That blessed moment when a Frenchman could say: ‘I’ve sown well. Now it is time to reap.’ And in his mind, he mapped out the future. He assigned a date to each event in the years to come: ‘I’ll move in here in October. I’ll get married. I’ll have a son. The second year, I’ll be able to have a holiday at the seaside …’ His life was planned in advance, sketched out right down to every success, right up until he was old, until he died. For naturally, there was death. It had its place in his domestic calculation. But death was no longer a wild animal lurking in the corner, lying in wait, ready to pounce. It was 1914, for heaven’s sake! The century of science, of progress. Even death seemed diminished in the light of such knowledge. It would wait in the wings for an appropriate moment, the moment when Doctor Brun would have fulfilled his destiny, lived a long, contented life, had children and bought a little house in the country, the moment when the white-haired Doctor Brun would fall peacefully asleep. Accompanying him on his path, Doctor Brun imagined Thérèse. He had always … he stopped at the word ‘loved’ as it seemed to him, heaven knows why, bordering on the improper. He had always hoped to make her his wife and the mother of his children. She was eighteen and he was thirty. Their ages were appropriate. She wasn’t rich but she had a small dowry of safe investments: Russian bonds. And so, everything was in place: the house, the money, the wife. His wife … But he hadn’t yet put the question. He had been content to make allusions, to sigh, pay compliments, to squeeze her hand furtively, but that was surely enough. ‘Women are so shrewd …’

Once again, Martial gave himself a stern talking to:

‘I will not let another day go by without asking her if she will marry me. It would be simpler to talk to Uncle Adolphe, but I must take a modern approach.