“But what happened to you at Romorantin?”
“Games...we were playing games in the field alongside the château. It was dark. I shoved a wicker basket over my head and one of my cronies set fire to it with his torch... I couldn’t yank off the basket.” Francis showed me his burned fingers. “This is what I get for playing the fool.
“Come...let’s go into the studio, where you keep your fossils from the Alps. I want you to explain again how you have estimated the age of the earth from your shells and ferns. I can’t seem to grasp that the earth is as old as you say it is.
“Look at this rock, Maestro, with the snail imbedded in it. Where did you find it? Did you find it in the Argentière Pass?”
“No, I found it when I climbed Monte Rosa, when I was making notes on the quality of light among the glaciers and snowfields. You see that snail came from the ocean...it’s an ocean snail...”
Today the new barber trimmed my hair and beard.
He is chief barber for the King, a Corsican, red-faced, rotund, about forty; he seems in the prime of life. As he trimmed my beard he ranted about autonomies, puny city against puny city.
“War is a sewer,” he kept repeating. “Man is crap...he is great. But he must stop fighting.” All very private, in his red-carpeted shop, mirrored, hung with dirks. One of many small rooms along a château corridor.
As I was about to leave, he said: