Maria and Daniel were efficiently putting everything away. I sat down on the terrace with Madame Vaugeois. She lit her cigarette with a fancy lighter and took a drag and let out a stream of smoke and a sigh, “Ah.” Then she looked at me square and said, “Bon. That was a success.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

She shifted in her seat and flicked the ash into a bronze ashtray. “No, I mean it. I told you about the Fondation D’Accueil. It’s the purpose of the evening.”

Fondation D’Accueil translated as ‘Welcome Foundation’. I recalled Simone Vaugeois statements on migrants from earlier. I said, “I wasn’t sure that you looked very charitably on migrants.”

She dismissed me with a wave of her cigarette. “That’s not true at all. I don’t see any contradiction. It’s true that I don’t want them to stay; that would be the end of France. But they are human beings no? Of course it is our duty to help them.” She looked at me funny. “It’s not only for Father Bousquet and the church.”

“That’s why the mayor and police director were here.”

Vaugeois agreed. “We have good civic engagement from the municipality. Thanks to me perhaps.” She looked satisfied.

I said nothing.

She took a hard pull on her cigarette and breathed out between her teeth. “Gilles and Benoit were close, you know. Gilles wasn’t an important man, like Benoit, but they were both interested in local history and that kind of thing.”

It took me a second to remember that Benoit was Benoit Houdin, the guy who had been murdered along with his family a couple of weeks ago. We’d toasted his memory earlier, with Mayor Marbot.

“What kind of local history?”

“Oh I don’t know, the things they spoke about in Gilles' study. You know men, they’re always going on about history and archaeology. It’s very significant to them. And some of it is interesting. It’s important to know where we come from.”

She stopped talking then. As if some kind of a switch and been flipped. She kissed me on both cheeks and excused herself. I sat on the terrace for a minute and went upstairs to the room she had prepared for me.

Which was spacious. The bed was a single. Like a kid’s bed, which I figured it had been. There was a sink in the corner, blocked off by a wooden folding partition with painted oriental designs. She had even put a towel there for me. I brushed my teeth and switched off the light. Got into the bed and lay in it. I could hear the sounds of Brumaire finally winding down for the night. I estimated the time at a quarter to two in the morning.

I slept like a baby, but briefly.