He smiled. It was so beautiful, so genuine I wanted to tell him stay like that, don’t move, I haven’t seen such a ­glorious smile for so long. But you don’t say such things, they sound tacky . . .

He laid his hand on my arm.

“You can’t hear yourself think in here . . . Want to go out?”

And there we were in the midst of the curious fauna you find on Prince-Arthur. The restaurants were just ­letting out; meals were being slowly digested, at the same rhythm as the after-dinner strolls. The street was packed with little pastel outfits casually dawdling in the post-­prandial silence or necking with an obvious lack of urgency. The benches were occupied by tottering rubbies or by ­golden-agers ending their evening watching the passing scene, the lucky people who could afford restaurant meals. A crowd had gathered around a fire-eater with an English accent, and they were letting out perfunctory little Oh’s when an exceptionally brilliant flame shot out of his mouth.

The crowd was so dense, Mathieu had got up on tiptoe for a better look. He leaned his head towards me until his cheek was almost resting on my shoulder.

“Whenever I see a fire-eater I wonder what his breath’s like . . .”

The air around us smelled of sweat, cheap perfume and garlic snails. The artiste had finished his show, to feeble applause. A few coins began to clink on the newly ­reconstructed “olde-style” sidewalk. Montreal isn’t just rediscovering its past: for the past few years it’s been inventing one. The city’s passion for the old is almost hysterical; everywhere, the goal of renovations is to make it old. I know, I’ve fallen into the trap myself. The work on my house isn’t even finished and I’m already sick of exposed beams and stripped woodwork.

The crowd dispersed with unfeigned haste and there we were, almost alone, watching the artiste gather up his things. Scraps of half-charred wood, little containers of gasoline, boxes of Eddy matches. He looked at us in amusement. “If you missed the start of the show you’ll have to wait half an hour . . . I don’t fire myself up till after my break.”

His accent was very funny and he knew it; I’d seen him playing on it during his performance, using it to get a laugh from the crowd. I even heard a particularly gross pig tell his girl-friend: “Maudits Anglais! They’ll do anything so they can stay here!”

We gave him some change and moved on. Mathieu seemed uncomfortable.

“It’s weird, but I’m always embarrassed giving money to somebody on the street. I didn’t have much myself for a while, but I was too uptight to ask for anything. I don’t know how they do it . . . I’m not criticizing them, I guess it’s my problem.”