‘It is the name ofthe son Hector takes in his arms before leaving to defend Troy against the Greek troops of Achilles.’

‘Who is this Hector?’

‘Are you familiar with Ronsard? A poet, just like Monsieur here.’

‘No.’

‘In his epic poem he tells how Astyanax, the son of Hector, having escaped death by moving the Greeks with his beauty, undertakes to journey to Gaul at the request of the gods, where he then establishes France.’

Corentine turned to the mayor.

‘Did you know that? That God sent Asty-whatever-his-name-is to establish France?’

‘Absolutely!’

‘Well then, that’s alright with me.’

Everybody signed the register and Corentine asked for and was provided with a copy of her son’s birth certificate so she might have him registered on her internal passport in the event she decided to return home with him.

Once the Republican ceremony had finished, Auguste changed out of his clothes in the back room and emerged clad in his National Guard uniform onto the forecourt of the town hall, where the others were waiting. There he took little Astyanax from his mother’s arms and brandished him heavenwards:

‘O Jupiter and all ye immortal gods, may my son be illustrious. Render him strong and courageous that he might reign over and command Troy, so that one day every man shall cry out upon seeing him return from combat: “He is braver still than his father!”’

Then he returned the child to his mother and disappeared around the corner.

Chapter 12

12

IT WAS CAUSING THE TRUST a huge headache, everything that was going on; I was not yet heir to the de Rignys, but I was the only one left to look after the old woman, so in return for a monthly salary equivalent to what I would earn in a year they begged me to move into a sort of three-storey apartment on Avenue Foch that had an internal staircase of the kind you see on cruise liners as well as a vast roof garden.

Hildegarde, who no longer had a job after being sentenced, moved in with me and Juliette, bringing along two very ugly dogs, Pistachio and Geranium, whom she had hastened to retrieve from animal rescue. We also had the most engineered rabbit in France, the only phosphorescent descendant of Alba who was cloned with a jellyfish in 2000, as well as an ailing sheep who had been rescued that same day during a raid on a genetic engineering laboratory.

Old Yvonne was nice enough and felt comfortable surrounded by animals, but my goal was to track down her son, Pierre, and apart from telling me he had been wicked for having chosen another mother whenever I would show her family photographs that had had his head meticulously cut out, she was of no help to us whatsoever.

We searched the whole apartment, shook out every book, tipped out every drawer, went down to the cellar and through the cupboards. Nothing.