And Blum: “The print? Then there really was one! You told me that . . .”

And Georges: “No. There wasn’t. Where did you get that idea?” And there wasn’t any—at least he had never seen any—picture representing that battle, that defeat, that rout, probably because defeated nations don’t like to perpetuate the memory of disasters; of that war there existed only one painting, decorating the main hall of the Hôtel de Ville and illustrating the victorious phase of the campaign—but that victory had occurred only a year later, and it was around a hundred years later still that an official painter had been commissioned to represent it, placing at the head of the ragged soldiers who looked like film extras an allegorical character, a woman wearing a white dress that bared one of her breasts, a Phrygian cap on her head, brandishing a sword and her mouth wide open, standing in the yellow sunlight surrounded by wisps of a glorious and bluish smoke, the gabions overturned and, in the foreground the grimacing and stupid face of a dead man shown in perspective, lying on his back, one leg half-bent, his arms outstretched and his head down, staring with his bulging eyes, the features twisted into an eternal grimace, successive generations of electors listening to the speeches of successive generations of politicians upon whom this victory had conferred the right to make speeches—and upon the listeners the right to listen to them—on the dais draped with tricolours.