We go out in the world and see what we have wrought.
We go in threes, three and three and then a pair with Mémé. She takes whoever she feels needs encouragement, the better to exhort them at length. This is not for our own gain, this is for everyone, for France herself. I have seen them at their estates. I have watched them dance and screw, drunk on their own gluttony, while children die of starvation at their gates. It is not right, it is not right. But we have the power to change this—the power and the understanding.
Today, however, there is no Mémé and her philosophizing; today there is only Isabella at my side. Aimée too, but she stops to peer in every shop window, she dawdles and hurries after us and dawdles again. She has kept her little mouche on, the red drop below her lip that w
