One thing is now clear: there is not so much as a single man offive foot one to be hadfor thousands of leagues around for less than 8000 francs. But worry not. We shall extricate you from this cursed conscription and I am certain you shall soon have your sister’s husband to thank, for he has taken the matter in hand. As a former soldier, he knows the taverns where these people drink and knows better than anyone how to talk to them. He proposed setting off for Toulon, where the African contingents land, but your sister has objected. It seems that town has become a cesspit where every dealer from the capital engaged in the trade of men is looking for stock. When a boat arrives, the insurance company agents and brokers appear, their pockets lined with gold, seeking to extract the signature of soldiers weakened by tropical fevers and infirmities after their long voyage at sea. They entice them into disreputable establishments, where they are drugged and encouraged to spend the substitution price they have not yet been paid on whores and orgies. The broker who has encouraged them to drink up then promises them 6000 francs and pays them only half that amount, the balance being set off against the cost of their debauchery, which is calculated at a usurious rate. He then sells them on for 10,000 francs to poorfathers who are willing to make any sacrifice in order to save their boy. In any event, I read in my friend Tripier’s paper that the recruitment boards had received very strict orders to refuse these damaged, cast-off soldiers from Africa.

Your brother-in-law has thus settled upon Brittany, where, it seems, he is owed some favours by old acquaintances. He has written to them. And now we’re waiting.

Auguste let out a plaintive sigh as he refolded his father’s letter, and then he stood up.

‘Aunt, I’m heading out!’

No answer.

He encountered her outside at the entrance porch to the building amid all the other residents of Rue du 10 Décembre, swooning before a troop of cuirassiers sitting proudly astride their mounts. The reflection of spring sunshine off armoured breastplates and the trembling of the ground under the horses’ hooves lent the atmosphere a warlike frisson, galvanising onlookers to the point where they nigh lost their voices bawling To Berlin! To Berlin!

Clothilde, who in the ordinary course would have peppered him with questions the moment he set foot outside the apartment, spared him not so much as a glance, so preoccupied was she with gazing at the soldiers’ tanned faces under their helmets, their powerful muscles, their puffed-up chests. Observing her surreptitiously, he noted in horror that despite her fifty-six years, she was quivering with desire as she inhaled the powerful smell of these battle-ready creatures through flared nostrils.

‘Aunt, I’m heading out!’ he repeated deliberately, raising his voice.