‘An animal who travelled first class, I’d just like to emphasise. I had to keep him with me so nobody stole him from you.’

Ferdinand raised his eyes to the heavens.

‘Brest to Paris first class for some beggar, now we’ve heard it all! And he had to be thanked on top of that? One does not thank somebody to whom one gives 11,000 francs!’

Casimir tried once again to declare a toast in honour of his son.

‘To Auguste,’ he said, with less conviction.

‘To France!’ cried Jules with all the heartfelt delight he was feeling from the 2000 francs he had filched with complete impunity from his family-in-law, not to mention the money spent on his orgies. ‘In less than a week, your substitute will be in Berlin, and when his period of service is over he will return to his island, crowned in glory, to wed his beloved. You will even be able to visit him should you wish, so you can confirm he is happy back in his little paradise, with all his medals pinned to his striped sailor’s jersey.’

Berthe tried to change the subject before it degenerated once more.

‘Tell us, my darling . . . What did you find there?’

‘The lost innocence of an earlier age, my dear, that is what I found on that island. Simple people living off their crops and livestock, far from the ugly realities of our modern world. They lead a harsh life, true enough, but still they remain cheerful. And then there’s the sea; it’s such a thing of indescribable beauty in those parts.’

‘How charming!’

‘Indeed it is: quite charming. But it is an extremely perilous journey, for when the ocean swell reveals the rocks, it’s as if they are calling you to them. Which is why the place has been able to preserve some perfectly astonishing traditions.’

Casimir was feeling so relieved at having wrested his young son from conscription that he had downed glass after glass and was feeling a little the worse for wear.

‘Now this manhunt has ended in such happy circumstances, what is it you are proposing to do with your future, Auguste?’ he enquired, light-heartedly.

‘Two of my friends and I are considering teaching.’

‘Teaching? So . . . where would you do that? At the university?’

‘Yes, at the people’s university.’

‘And what exactly is that, now?’ asked Ferdinand, scathingly.

‘A place where people are given the opportunity to transform their lived experience into political knowledge. Where they will be taught to act on their own behalf, sharing their experiences. A place where, simply put, we will create the possible. But above all else a secular place where they will not be perverted by some charlatan hope of a better life after death so they accept their current misery. It was Condorcet who said: Mankind is divided between those men who reason and those who believe. ’