I was glad to find this out. Alexandre Dumas, the son, must have chosen this flower to honour his own father, who’d put so much effort into writing The Three Musketeers – a novel so educational that it’s been made into films. He wasn’t an ungrateful son. I promised myself I’d tell Dad. And it did prove something actually: important things can sometimes take place between father and son. When I put down the dictionary I realized that Marie was there, returning a book to the librarian. I waited for her to leave and then I followed her. I wanted to catch up with her, but the snotty, stuck-up girls were waiting for her, so I was stopped in my tracks.

We spent the last lesson of the day dissecting bulls’ eyes, in pairs: Haisam wielded the scalpel and I took notes. I tried to catch Marie’s eye, but without success: she was keeping her eyes down while she cut up her eye, if you see what I mean. Then Monsieur Dubois drew some diagrams to show us how a bull sees, and I remember he explained it by drawing a little train in front of the bull. Our eyes worked in the same way, he said. At one point Marie asked a very detailed question, which I didn’t entirely catch, because of the complicated words. Monsieur Dubois seemed very surprised so Marie explained.

“It’s because my father’s a doctor, so sometimes…”

At the end of the lesson I made a show of hanging around in the corridors, so that she could leave first and I could tag along behind. Then I saw Lucky Luke. I thought that was going to spell disaster, because he was heading towards me, and normally that wasn’t a good sign. I racked my brains to think what I might have done, but even I couldn’t think of anything. My conscience was clear. But had someone told him about the geometric miracle? Did he suspect something?

“How’s it going, Victor?”

His manner was friendly, which reassured me a little, but at the same time he seemed to be fretting about something.

“Good, thanks. How about you? You were unlucky in the race last Sunday … loose gravel on the descent always makes things tricky!”

“There’s something I want to ask you,” he said.

“Yes?”

“Tell me, your Three Musketeers, was it Alexandre Dumas the father or the son who wrote it?”

He crossed his arms and looked at me as though he was expecting something important to be solemnly revealed.

“The father, of course. The son mostly wrote stories about poorly flowers.”

“Oh, right … what a strange family.”

“Why are you asking me?”

“Because reading needs space to breathe.”

I thought about how my Honourable Egyptian expressed himself in a symbolic way that you couldn’t always understand immediately. Perhaps it was slightly contagious.