So what makes him apply for unpaid work? I try to dissuade him one evening when we meet at the swimming pool, where Mauro, having forgotten the mandatory swimming cap, pushes fourteen gold-colored coins, one after another, into the slot of a vending machine, without having enough—I give him the exact amount. Why are you so determined to work for nothing? Mauro tenses, his face turns hard: he is thinking about the long term; he wants to learn, to train in the best establishments, and he’s willing to work for free to do that. Anyway, thanks for the advice, but I know what I’m doing.

The Merveil on Rue Lamarck, at the back of the Montmartre hill, is the establishment in question: a hushed, conservative, luxurious Michelin-starred restaurant. The best in the north of the capital. A dining room for sixty covers; wood-paneled walls, tieback curtains, chintz, round tables with heavy tablecloths that reach down to the floor, white napkins, sculpted glasses, and silver flatware. The dishes there are precisely, immaculately arranged. So Mauro learns a new skill in the kitchen—meticulousness—and he learns it under pressure.

Initially, the young man is taken aback. Confronted for the first time with this desire for mastery, with this silent tension aimed at excellence, a tension capable of organizing the entirety of a team’s work, a tension that can make a hierarchy dance, create a complex assembly of rivalries and micropowers that encourage and fight against one another, demand that the employees surpass themselves. A tension capable of building a system.