I know a few professors who, because they’d reached a certain social level, bled themselves dry to buy what they thought they had to have, which turned out to be a bottomless pit in which they lost themselves, their money and their sanity. Killing yourself for a house seems to come from an irresistible passion among CEGEP teachers, and the ­situation’s so widespread you hardly notice it any more: most conversations seem directed at people who aren’t yet homeowners, pariahs who included me until barely a year ago, whom people point to and who don’t know how lucky they are. When they found out I was buying a house in partnership with my woman friends, some of my colleagues snickered and told me I was a jerk, while lauding the ­merits of their little garden in Notre-Dame-de-Grâce or of the superimposed terraces in Outremont or even Westmount. It got me down for a couple of weeks, made me feel really useless because I hadn’t set my sights high enough; but then the sudden bankruptcy of one of my colleagues put things back in perspective: I didn’t know if I was really cut out to be a landlord, so why embark on an adventure that I already suspected was beyond me? I shrugged off the ­snickers. And on the night in question, right in the middle of Dunlop Street, outside a house that was perfectly ­dazzling but, thank God, inaccessible, for the first time I was proud of what I’d done. No, not proud, relieved. I ­pictured myself going back inside my house after I’d turned on the sprinklers, climbing the broad staircase, heading for the bathroom, taking my heartburn tablets or my headache pills . . . I saw again the downcast look of some of my ­colleagues on Monday morning, their red eyes, furrowed brows, the circles under their eyes, and I went home to Bloomfield Street as happy as a clam.

Bernard was empty. Totally. It was hard to imagine that an hour earlier people had nearly come to blows over a seat on the terrace of La Moulerie or Le Café du Théâtre. Unlike Laurier Street, which is still lively into the small hours, around one a.m. Bernard, because of some idiotic new law, seems to drop dead, as if struck by lightning, although until a few weeks ago the streets had been full of people till all hours and in total freedom.

When I turned in I realized I hadn’t thought about Mathieu once during my walk.