‘I don’t think that I have. This business between l’Aiglon and Count Prokesch. Quite revolting, utterly reprehensible, absolutely untrue.’

‘I cannot believe what I hear!’

‘I could not believe what I read! Count Prokesch was a brave, brilliant soldier, a man of thirty-four when he met l’Aiglon who was but twenty; lonely, fatherless, abandoned by his disgusting mother, a prisoner for life in an alien land. Prokesch was his salvation, he appeared as a God of Deliverance, he gave him courage and hope, he was a man of the highest valour and the strongest morals, and in this story of yours he appears as an evil pederast, a destroyer, unclean!’

‘Not so! Not so!’ cried Grottorosso in a brilliant display of indignation.

‘That is how I read it.’ Archie was very calm in the face of the Italian hysteria.

‘But my dear sir! Oh! Dio Mio!’ Grottorosso covered his face with his hands, when he looked up again he appeared exhausted. ‘I think that there is some tragic error. You have of course been reading all the Directions, that is so?’

‘Naturally.’

‘Ah … but those are not for you to read! They are only for the idiot American backers who cannot read anything but the Profit and Loss columns: they have to be able to see something which will attract them to finance my film, you see?’

‘And this kind of disgusting innuendo will attract them?’

‘Of course. It is very fashionable today.’

‘I am revolted.’

‘Naturally. But, my dear Sir Charles, you have not read one single word of this kind in the actual dialogue between the characters; not one word, for there is not one syllable of ugliness or suggestion there.’

Archie tapped his cigarette slowly on the ashtray. ‘No … no. Perhaps not in the actual dialogue,’ he said uncertainly.

‘Of course not! That is not my way. I do not make my film from the directions! I make it from the heart, and from the soul of my people.’

‘But it is implied. When they are fencing together and l’Aiglon collapses, he is held in Prokesch’s arms … like, like a girl!’

‘l’Aiglon, I must not remind you, is a dying boy. It is a moment of great tragedy.’

‘And riding in the woods, in the storm, they lie naked together.’

‘In a storm one gets wet. They remove only shirts and tunics; they rest in the barn to dry and to discuss Nandine Károlyi with whom l’Aiglon is deeply in love. Is that not reasonable?’

‘Why half naked?’

‘Because they are wet and l’Aiglon has tuberculosis. Is that not also reasonable?’

‘I can’t see why they have to get wet in a storm.’

‘It is dramatic, it heightens the decision of Prokesch to send Károlyi away.’

‘And that part smacks of jealousy!’