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the end of March, in Rue d’Ulm, Rosenthal exclaimed that the Revolution required far more than articles:
    â€” One writes, he said, and one believes that the Revolution is made. One falls – we fall – into post-revolutionary fantasies. Are you satisfied? Yes or no? You’re not saying anything? One’s confidence in revolution can be measured only by the sacrifices one makes to it and the risks one runs for it . . .
    â€” That’s more or less what I’ve always had the honour of telling you, replied Laforgue.
    Next day, Bloyé said to Laforgue:
    â€” It’s four months that the journal has been going now, that’s a long time . . . Rosenthal must have some ideas at the back of his mind. You can detect that hypocritical self-satisfaction of men who are making plans . . .
    â€” Yes, said Laforgue. He’s slyly singing a new song to himself.
    Rosenthal dropped hints, he said:
    â€” Do you recall Dostoievsky and what he says about the Idea one must have and in whose power one must believe? There’s no living person to whom I feel closer than I do to Arkady Makarovich Dolgoruky . . .
    His friends waited, however. Knowing his taste for mystery and coups de théâtre, they did not question him.

VI
    One Saturday, towards evening, they all received an express letter inviting them to assemble next day at two o’clock opposite Saint-Germain-des-Prés: all of them – Laforgue, Bloyé, Jurien and lastly Pluvinage.
    No group of young people exists in which hierarchies and distances are not established, as though some of them were credited by all the others with a more far-reaching future. Rosenthal, who was looked on as the leader and enjoyed this position, vaguely mistrusted Pluvinage and had hesitated before inviting him along: he would not have entrusted him with his secrets. Perhaps it was because of his name: nobody calls themself Pluvinage. But the day was not expected to be packed with great mysteries, so Bernard had notified Pluvinage after all.
    It was a rainy early-April day, an icy aftermath of those March showers when all hopes placed in the establishment of spring burst as rapidly as the heavens. Because of that black Sunday rain, Paris was empty: umbrellas drifted between wind and water like shining jellyfish; couples made their way to tedious visits and slapped their children; gusts of damp wind closed down the newspaper vendors under the Abbey porch, where three beggars lay in ambush for the faithful at Vespers. Rosenthal was waiting in an old open car, parked between the Clamart tramway and the shop supplying insignia on Place Saint-Germain-des-Prés.
    â€” You’re a proper swine, said Bloyé, you really could have brought your old hearse up to Rue d’Ulm.
    â€” Climb aboard, said Rosenthal. We’ve quite a way to go.
    â€” Might one know where we’re off to? asked Laforgue.
    â€” You’ll soon see, replied Rosenthal as he engaged the gears.
    None of them insisted: they had not yet lost their taste for mystery games.
    The car left Paris by Avenue de Neuilly and Route de la Défense; at Argenteuil, which they approached via the river embankment, batteries of factory chimneys rose behind the curtain of rain over flat meadows ruffled by the wind; acid fumes hung everywhere in the harsh Sunday air; after leaving behind Argenteuil and then Bezons, they crossed the Seine a second time by the Maisons-Laffitte bridge, then turned in the direction of Saint-Germain. A little before Mesnil-le-Roi, the car stopped with a screech of brakes in front of an old house built in that rather soft facing-stone which one soon encounters along the roads of the Vexin region. The rain had just stopped. Its branches still black, barely budding after the interminable winter, the wisteria over the gate was dripping. Rosenthal rang at the iron door; a young woman emerged onto the perron and shouted to them to come in, and they pushed open