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psalm_onethirtyoneBossuet's Chapter! At last! My heavens! That'll be this story, which I probably do need to link considering that it's been well over a month since I wrote the last chapter.
At any rate. Enjoy your healthy dose of Amis!hate. :P
~~~Chapter Five: Il Dolce Far Niente~~~
He watched Joly put his head on one side and then begin his work, and felt an unexpected, if unsurprising, warm feeling of love.
They were two things which were always with one another, he and Joly. He was the eagle and Joly was the beautiful one, but they were rarely seen not in one another's company, except at school, where the fellows would pretend to be surprised in that annoying, exaggerated way people have of looking astonished and crying out,--
"Ye Gods! It's Bossuet (L'aigle) (Lesgles) without his Joly (his beautiful one)!"
But it was rather strange to him that they did so. He had always been his own. He had not even met Joly until just three years ago, and the other twenty-one years of his life had been his own. Joly didn't really know anything about him, though he knew all about Joly--Joly didn't know, for example, about his house or his family or his thinking. Joly didn't know where he had played when he was a little boy or what promises he'd made girls when he was growing up or how many dogs his Aunt Helene had and that he knew all their names by looking at their ears; Joly didn't know how many sisters he really had because he always made their number impossibly large when he talked of them, to make Joly laugh; Joly didn't know the special painful memory of every bone he'd ever broken, despite knowing the number, because Bossuet only mentioned them when he was telling stories about his clumsiness, and he only said just the right things to make Joly smile and shake his head and say, with his voice filled with fondness,--
"Ah, L'aigle--"
(And Bossuet never said anything about himself unless it was to make his friends laugh, never let anybody know the story of his name or the circumstances of the little crescent scar over his eye unless the details were embellished and spun out and kneaded like sweet bread dough, so nobody really knew the truth about anything that had happened to him, because he never related history, he only always told stories)
Sometimes he considered leaving Joly just for a few days, because he was his own and he wanted to go out somewhere where he wasn't known and stand on a street corner by himself, as himself, watching with his own eyes and making his own sarcastic comments to himself. Then he remembered that his comments would be wasted if he was the only one to hear them, and he could see better with another pair of eyes to help him, and he needed someone else to be there to pay the carriage fare home after he lost his money in the gutter or it was stolen from his pocket.
"L'aigle," said Joly suddenly, looking up from his work. "Did you decide with Combeferre where we are going to eat to-night?"
"Alas, no, beautiful one. We were undecided. The foolish fellow demanded that we go to the same old place we always go, and I suggested we go somewhere new. Somewhere we've never been before. Well, isn't change a clever, interesting thing? I cannot fathom what makes a poor man decide he'd best go the same place every evening." He cast a mock reproachful look at Combeferre, who smiled sweetly.
"Ah, well, you know, familiarity can be a blessing, mes amis. At least we know our usual place has decent prices."
"Prices! Is that what you concern yourself with?" They had already had this entire argument, but Joly had missed it the first time, and Bossuet recognised that they must perform it again so he could see, or else it would be worth nothing. He played his part gladly. "Materialistic, very materialistic."
"A crime, yes," Joly agreed, watching eagerly, his eyes delighted. He was joining in the pageant a little, but he was clearly pleased with it.
Bossuet wasn't good on his own. There was something which was not there when he was alone, and that something was--it was an audience. He was no good without someone to laugh at him, after all. He needed someone to appreciate the stupid things he said about pretty girls, or help him up, grinning, after he tripped over a lump of ice in the street.
So he stayed with Joly, because Joly had money and a home and a laugh, and because Joly liked being his audience. Joly liked his job of being there, even if it consisted only of smiling and shaking his head and saying,--
"Ah, L'aigle."
(And sometimes he thought Joly must be much, much older than he was, when he saw him standing there, dressed up in that stupid greatcoat, watching the world with those blue eyes, his face set pensively and quietly--when he saw him smile and shake his head like a half-sad, half-amused older brother not sure whether it would be all right to laugh at his brother's folly. Then sometimes Bossuet thought Joly was much, much younger, and he wanted to tousle his hair gently like an older brother playing with his sweet little sister. Once in a long while, Joly would be an old man, his grandfather, and once in a long while, Joly would be his wife, because the equality was so strong and Joly's eyes so soft and his smile so perfect and accommodating and he was always, always, ready to laugh, and Bossuet needed the laughter to be someone)
He had not always needed the laughter.
His family had never thought he was funny, after all. They were a strained, strange family, always a bit short on money but always with enough when something was really necessary (like the education of their eldest son, whose real name nobody remembered). His mother thought his breaking things was horrible; she lost three heirloom plates to him and every time descended into fierce screamings and tears. He knew she did not hate him, but she hated losing anything. His father thought his clever comments were foolish; he was supposed to quote the Bible and know all the Almanac sayings farmers knew about the weather and the skies. Bossuet knew he was not really disappointed in him, but sometimes his father couldn't help seeming it on the spur of the moment. He had six little sisters and a little brother, with queer bright eyes and tight little pink mouths, and though he performed all his home-made magic tricks for them and pulled faces and used all his geniality and talent, he could never get them to smile.
He was very used to this when he first left home, and he never quite understood why he went on trying to entertain people when he came to Paris. In Paris, though, they laughed at him. At first, he had thought they were being cruel when they laughed and mocked him, but he quickly learnt that if he laughed too--if he tripped and sprawled and argued futilely but on purpose, people would not call him a fool--they would call him a fine fellow, and enjoy his company.
"Gentlemen, I have a way to settle it. I fear we can never regain our lost chance to see that Theology lecture of Daniel's, so you'll never get a chance that way to win your cheeses," Bossuet said, turning to address Combeferre. "However, we'll go to a new restaurant this evening. If it's a decent place, I keep the cheese. If it's expensive, the help is poor, the food inedible, the décor renders eating impossible, or the chairs and tables wiggle and have a tendency to tip over, why, then, the cheese goes to you without another word. Is that fair?"
"What, all those things? That's too many conditions!" said Joly, laughing.
"Of course not. I don't set impossible tasks. One of those things is all that's needed. Do you accept?"
Combeferre was laughing as well, and his fine, fair, open face looked wonderfully content and amused. He was the picture of a man among friends, satisfied. "Yes, the conditions seem fair. Done. But, you know, we've still got to decide on a place to eat."
"A pity you continue to argue over such petty details." Bossuet shook his head sombrely and looked past Combeferre's ear. "Ma belle here will decide, for he's the one impartial judge. I might pick a place I secretly know to be good. You might choose an establishment which you know has a reputation for squalid atmosphere. No, it's Daniel's choice."
"All right," said Joly. "I'll think while I work. We can't go until we're done."
Combeferre nodded, smiling sagely, and returned to his papers.
So he became an artist, the best artist, a performing artist so good that people didn't realise he was acting. He could do amazing acrobatics, and his script was dexterously written by an author with a wonderful sense of humour, and his bad luck was carefully arranged by half a dozen little directions ahead of time.
His real name nobody remembered, but they remembered him, and they loved him, and he had never had friends before. It was a strange thing to have friends who did not forget him.
He frequented pawn shops on the rare occasion he was alone, and collected numerous useless things for making bets with--that was his speciality, and nobody had ever failed to like it. He owned only old, torn clothes, which he professed his love for; he hadn't bought himself a hat that fit in years, because it was more amusing to see a too-small cap scrunched down on his bald head; and he never had any money on him. Any money he did have all went into the preparations, anyway.
His sleight-of-hand got better and better, and he could trip himself up over something that wasn't there. Falling down stairs was the one thing he always had trouble with, because a sensible part of him was always afraid of how much it hurt, tumbling; but he could make it work, and there was never more than a second's hesitation before he fell.
Once he considered explaining all this to Joly, but it wasn't really any use. He didn't want Joly to know. Joly liked his L'aigle quite all right, and there was no telling what he might thing of Bossuet-who-did-not-joke-or-stumble, a tall, gawky, stupid, nervous fellow named Patrice Lesgles.
He did, however, trust only Joly of all the people he knew. He thought perhaps it was from living with him for three years, though he had lived with his sisters and brother for at least ten years each, and didn't trust them at all. He didn't particularly trust even the other Amis--especially the other Amis, he thought, smiling as he stretched again and Joly looked over. He had met Joly in that wretched little doctor's place after he had broken his arm for Courfeyrac, having only just struck up an acquaintance with him. Joly smiled and chattered, excited and amused and very convinced about his serious condition but quite able to spare attention over Bossuet's hurt. The attention was very flattering, and Bossuet grew quickly to this sympathetic fellow.
So they became friends.
It was not like this with the other Amis. Bossuet fell in with them because of Courfeyrac, and for a while amused them very thoroughly, but he was never very close to any of them. He never knew any of their secrets. Just Joly's.
He didn't even really like them--of course, nobody did, he thought, laughing to himself. None of the Amis liked one another, really. They gave each other veiled glances and said secretly sarcastic things and that, he thought, must be obvious to anyone. No--he didn't like them. They had been a decent audience for a while, and then they changed. They grew less ready at making good-humoured pretences, and got fed up with him instead of amused.
Enjolras, more than anyone else, loathed him for a distraction. Bossuet occasionally had wished he weren't, just to avoid that unpleasant dark gaze becoming fixed disapprovingly on him, but he had done his artistry for so long and was so good at it that it was second nature, and much of the time more than second nature, and he couldn't--wouldn't--stop it for anyone, particularly not Enjolras.
Courfeyrac, of course, was one of those fellows who got easily bored with things. He wasn't surprised or bothered by the fact that Courfeyrac had long since stopped being entertained, and he felt much the same way about Bahorel. Bahorel, being a clumsy, aggressive fellow, was not really a good audience or companion for anyone, and he was only surprised that Feuilly had stood by him for so long. --And, as for Feuilly, he hated everybody equally and Bossuet could not be hurt by that, either.
As for the rest of them, Jean Prouvaire was a silly boy, and Combeferre was a strange man. Bossuet pitied the former in an agreeable way and while he didn't like him, didn't have anything against him; but Combeferre, on the other hand, made him nervous. He couldn't explain it, but he hated to be around the fellow. There was a strange air of self-love about him, a strange rottenness in his complacency and kindness to everyone, and it was quite distasteful. No, he certainly did not like Combeferre.
So there was only his dear beautiful one, his Joly, and there was Grantaire.
Bossuet was almost fond of Grantaire. He had never admitted it to Joly, because, poor fellow, he got jealous; but he really enjoyed Grantaire's company quite a lot. Perhaps it was the meaningless talk. He liked meaningless talk. It didn't require anything, and Grantaire tolerated him even when he was in a serious frame of mind. For such a thing did happen from time to time; a serious frame of mind, that was. There would be days when nothing in the world could make him his usual self, but Grantaire would always be too drunk to notice or care, and he could pity himself and make melodramatic speeches and drink wine, and all Grantaire would require of him was that he paid for the wine.
Then, too, Grantaire did need the company. Joly didn't entirely understand this, but it was most true. Grantaire was an alone man, someone who truly had nothing, and Bossuet remembered his times of solitude at home before he left, with his brother and sisters and their bright eyes, and he wanted--and the feeling was peculiar and didn't feel entirely right on him--to take care of Grantaire in that respect. Every man needs some kind of talk, he thought. One can't go through life entirely alone and entirely unheard and entirely unseen, with no audience at all. So he always made time for Grantaire.
Bossuet looked over at him now. There he was. He had come into the café and sat down at his usual corner table sometime during the evening and was drinking ponderously, not yet drunk enough to be loud but not sober enough to be angry. His eyes were fixed on a point above the door and he drank rather slowly. Bossuet smiled towards him gently.
Then, suddenly, he was called back by Joly, who coughed and tugged his threadbare sleeve.
"L'aigle," he said.
"Yes, my beautiful one?"
"Are you finished? Combeferre and I are finished."
"Then you've found a place for us to eat?" Bossuet raised his eyebrows up his bare forehead comically and inquisitively.
In response, Joly showed him a tiny guilty smile, like that of a child who knows he oughtn't be laughing at whatever it is that's amused him. It was rather fetching, Bossuet thought fondly. "I have. You know that they've opened a new bistro in the Latin Quarter called L'Auberge du Marin. You've not been, have you?"
"In a word, ma belle, no."
"Wonderful! But have you finished? You eluded the question."
"Ah, not yet. I've been neglecting my work. I've been surveying the landscape and daydreaming when I ought to be putting myself to it."
Joly's lips twitched fetchingly about the corners in the beginnings of a new, and bigger, smile. "Well, we'll wait only another half hour for you, and if you're not done by then, we'll leave without you."
"In that case, I'll be diligent. Hand me a pen; thank you. There!" He stretched his wrists and bent forward. "To work. After all, we ought to find out some time to-night whether Combeferre's earned his cheeses."
"Indeed," said Combeferre laughingly. "I'm quite eager to know."
"Well, then," Bossuet replied, and he cast one last look at Grantaire, pouring another glass, before he began to write.
At any rate. Enjoy your healthy dose of Amis!hate. :P
He watched Joly put his head on one side and then begin his work, and felt an unexpected, if unsurprising, warm feeling of love.
They were two things which were always with one another, he and Joly. He was the eagle and Joly was the beautiful one, but they were rarely seen not in one another's company, except at school, where the fellows would pretend to be surprised in that annoying, exaggerated way people have of looking astonished and crying out,--
"Ye Gods! It's Bossuet (L'aigle) (Lesgles) without his Joly (his beautiful one)!"
But it was rather strange to him that they did so. He had always been his own. He had not even met Joly until just three years ago, and the other twenty-one years of his life had been his own. Joly didn't really know anything about him, though he knew all about Joly--Joly didn't know, for example, about his house or his family or his thinking. Joly didn't know where he had played when he was a little boy or what promises he'd made girls when he was growing up or how many dogs his Aunt Helene had and that he knew all their names by looking at their ears; Joly didn't know how many sisters he really had because he always made their number impossibly large when he talked of them, to make Joly laugh; Joly didn't know the special painful memory of every bone he'd ever broken, despite knowing the number, because Bossuet only mentioned them when he was telling stories about his clumsiness, and he only said just the right things to make Joly smile and shake his head and say, with his voice filled with fondness,--
"Ah, L'aigle--"
(And Bossuet never said anything about himself unless it was to make his friends laugh, never let anybody know the story of his name or the circumstances of the little crescent scar over his eye unless the details were embellished and spun out and kneaded like sweet bread dough, so nobody really knew the truth about anything that had happened to him, because he never related history, he only always told stories)
Sometimes he considered leaving Joly just for a few days, because he was his own and he wanted to go out somewhere where he wasn't known and stand on a street corner by himself, as himself, watching with his own eyes and making his own sarcastic comments to himself. Then he remembered that his comments would be wasted if he was the only one to hear them, and he could see better with another pair of eyes to help him, and he needed someone else to be there to pay the carriage fare home after he lost his money in the gutter or it was stolen from his pocket.
"L'aigle," said Joly suddenly, looking up from his work. "Did you decide with Combeferre where we are going to eat to-night?"
"Alas, no, beautiful one. We were undecided. The foolish fellow demanded that we go to the same old place we always go, and I suggested we go somewhere new. Somewhere we've never been before. Well, isn't change a clever, interesting thing? I cannot fathom what makes a poor man decide he'd best go the same place every evening." He cast a mock reproachful look at Combeferre, who smiled sweetly.
"Ah, well, you know, familiarity can be a blessing, mes amis. At least we know our usual place has decent prices."
"Prices! Is that what you concern yourself with?" They had already had this entire argument, but Joly had missed it the first time, and Bossuet recognised that they must perform it again so he could see, or else it would be worth nothing. He played his part gladly. "Materialistic, very materialistic."
"A crime, yes," Joly agreed, watching eagerly, his eyes delighted. He was joining in the pageant a little, but he was clearly pleased with it.
Bossuet wasn't good on his own. There was something which was not there when he was alone, and that something was--it was an audience. He was no good without someone to laugh at him, after all. He needed someone to appreciate the stupid things he said about pretty girls, or help him up, grinning, after he tripped over a lump of ice in the street.
So he stayed with Joly, because Joly had money and a home and a laugh, and because Joly liked being his audience. Joly liked his job of being there, even if it consisted only of smiling and shaking his head and saying,--
"Ah, L'aigle."
(And sometimes he thought Joly must be much, much older than he was, when he saw him standing there, dressed up in that stupid greatcoat, watching the world with those blue eyes, his face set pensively and quietly--when he saw him smile and shake his head like a half-sad, half-amused older brother not sure whether it would be all right to laugh at his brother's folly. Then sometimes Bossuet thought Joly was much, much younger, and he wanted to tousle his hair gently like an older brother playing with his sweet little sister. Once in a long while, Joly would be an old man, his grandfather, and once in a long while, Joly would be his wife, because the equality was so strong and Joly's eyes so soft and his smile so perfect and accommodating and he was always, always, ready to laugh, and Bossuet needed the laughter to be someone)
He had not always needed the laughter.
His family had never thought he was funny, after all. They were a strained, strange family, always a bit short on money but always with enough when something was really necessary (like the education of their eldest son, whose real name nobody remembered). His mother thought his breaking things was horrible; she lost three heirloom plates to him and every time descended into fierce screamings and tears. He knew she did not hate him, but she hated losing anything. His father thought his clever comments were foolish; he was supposed to quote the Bible and know all the Almanac sayings farmers knew about the weather and the skies. Bossuet knew he was not really disappointed in him, but sometimes his father couldn't help seeming it on the spur of the moment. He had six little sisters and a little brother, with queer bright eyes and tight little pink mouths, and though he performed all his home-made magic tricks for them and pulled faces and used all his geniality and talent, he could never get them to smile.
He was very used to this when he first left home, and he never quite understood why he went on trying to entertain people when he came to Paris. In Paris, though, they laughed at him. At first, he had thought they were being cruel when they laughed and mocked him, but he quickly learnt that if he laughed too--if he tripped and sprawled and argued futilely but on purpose, people would not call him a fool--they would call him a fine fellow, and enjoy his company.
"Gentlemen, I have a way to settle it. I fear we can never regain our lost chance to see that Theology lecture of Daniel's, so you'll never get a chance that way to win your cheeses," Bossuet said, turning to address Combeferre. "However, we'll go to a new restaurant this evening. If it's a decent place, I keep the cheese. If it's expensive, the help is poor, the food inedible, the décor renders eating impossible, or the chairs and tables wiggle and have a tendency to tip over, why, then, the cheese goes to you without another word. Is that fair?"
"What, all those things? That's too many conditions!" said Joly, laughing.
"Of course not. I don't set impossible tasks. One of those things is all that's needed. Do you accept?"
Combeferre was laughing as well, and his fine, fair, open face looked wonderfully content and amused. He was the picture of a man among friends, satisfied. "Yes, the conditions seem fair. Done. But, you know, we've still got to decide on a place to eat."
"A pity you continue to argue over such petty details." Bossuet shook his head sombrely and looked past Combeferre's ear. "Ma belle here will decide, for he's the one impartial judge. I might pick a place I secretly know to be good. You might choose an establishment which you know has a reputation for squalid atmosphere. No, it's Daniel's choice."
"All right," said Joly. "I'll think while I work. We can't go until we're done."
Combeferre nodded, smiling sagely, and returned to his papers.
So he became an artist, the best artist, a performing artist so good that people didn't realise he was acting. He could do amazing acrobatics, and his script was dexterously written by an author with a wonderful sense of humour, and his bad luck was carefully arranged by half a dozen little directions ahead of time.
His real name nobody remembered, but they remembered him, and they loved him, and he had never had friends before. It was a strange thing to have friends who did not forget him.
He frequented pawn shops on the rare occasion he was alone, and collected numerous useless things for making bets with--that was his speciality, and nobody had ever failed to like it. He owned only old, torn clothes, which he professed his love for; he hadn't bought himself a hat that fit in years, because it was more amusing to see a too-small cap scrunched down on his bald head; and he never had any money on him. Any money he did have all went into the preparations, anyway.
His sleight-of-hand got better and better, and he could trip himself up over something that wasn't there. Falling down stairs was the one thing he always had trouble with, because a sensible part of him was always afraid of how much it hurt, tumbling; but he could make it work, and there was never more than a second's hesitation before he fell.
Once he considered explaining all this to Joly, but it wasn't really any use. He didn't want Joly to know. Joly liked his L'aigle quite all right, and there was no telling what he might thing of Bossuet-who-did-not-joke-or-stumble, a tall, gawky, stupid, nervous fellow named Patrice Lesgles.
He did, however, trust only Joly of all the people he knew. He thought perhaps it was from living with him for three years, though he had lived with his sisters and brother for at least ten years each, and didn't trust them at all. He didn't particularly trust even the other Amis--especially the other Amis, he thought, smiling as he stretched again and Joly looked over. He had met Joly in that wretched little doctor's place after he had broken his arm for Courfeyrac, having only just struck up an acquaintance with him. Joly smiled and chattered, excited and amused and very convinced about his serious condition but quite able to spare attention over Bossuet's hurt. The attention was very flattering, and Bossuet grew quickly to this sympathetic fellow.
So they became friends.
It was not like this with the other Amis. Bossuet fell in with them because of Courfeyrac, and for a while amused them very thoroughly, but he was never very close to any of them. He never knew any of their secrets. Just Joly's.
He didn't even really like them--of course, nobody did, he thought, laughing to himself. None of the Amis liked one another, really. They gave each other veiled glances and said secretly sarcastic things and that, he thought, must be obvious to anyone. No--he didn't like them. They had been a decent audience for a while, and then they changed. They grew less ready at making good-humoured pretences, and got fed up with him instead of amused.
Enjolras, more than anyone else, loathed him for a distraction. Bossuet occasionally had wished he weren't, just to avoid that unpleasant dark gaze becoming fixed disapprovingly on him, but he had done his artistry for so long and was so good at it that it was second nature, and much of the time more than second nature, and he couldn't--wouldn't--stop it for anyone, particularly not Enjolras.
Courfeyrac, of course, was one of those fellows who got easily bored with things. He wasn't surprised or bothered by the fact that Courfeyrac had long since stopped being entertained, and he felt much the same way about Bahorel. Bahorel, being a clumsy, aggressive fellow, was not really a good audience or companion for anyone, and he was only surprised that Feuilly had stood by him for so long. --And, as for Feuilly, he hated everybody equally and Bossuet could not be hurt by that, either.
As for the rest of them, Jean Prouvaire was a silly boy, and Combeferre was a strange man. Bossuet pitied the former in an agreeable way and while he didn't like him, didn't have anything against him; but Combeferre, on the other hand, made him nervous. He couldn't explain it, but he hated to be around the fellow. There was a strange air of self-love about him, a strange rottenness in his complacency and kindness to everyone, and it was quite distasteful. No, he certainly did not like Combeferre.
So there was only his dear beautiful one, his Joly, and there was Grantaire.
Bossuet was almost fond of Grantaire. He had never admitted it to Joly, because, poor fellow, he got jealous; but he really enjoyed Grantaire's company quite a lot. Perhaps it was the meaningless talk. He liked meaningless talk. It didn't require anything, and Grantaire tolerated him even when he was in a serious frame of mind. For such a thing did happen from time to time; a serious frame of mind, that was. There would be days when nothing in the world could make him his usual self, but Grantaire would always be too drunk to notice or care, and he could pity himself and make melodramatic speeches and drink wine, and all Grantaire would require of him was that he paid for the wine.
Then, too, Grantaire did need the company. Joly didn't entirely understand this, but it was most true. Grantaire was an alone man, someone who truly had nothing, and Bossuet remembered his times of solitude at home before he left, with his brother and sisters and their bright eyes, and he wanted--and the feeling was peculiar and didn't feel entirely right on him--to take care of Grantaire in that respect. Every man needs some kind of talk, he thought. One can't go through life entirely alone and entirely unheard and entirely unseen, with no audience at all. So he always made time for Grantaire.
Bossuet looked over at him now. There he was. He had come into the café and sat down at his usual corner table sometime during the evening and was drinking ponderously, not yet drunk enough to be loud but not sober enough to be angry. His eyes were fixed on a point above the door and he drank rather slowly. Bossuet smiled towards him gently.
Then, suddenly, he was called back by Joly, who coughed and tugged his threadbare sleeve.
"L'aigle," he said.
"Yes, my beautiful one?"
"Are you finished? Combeferre and I are finished."
"Then you've found a place for us to eat?" Bossuet raised his eyebrows up his bare forehead comically and inquisitively.
In response, Joly showed him a tiny guilty smile, like that of a child who knows he oughtn't be laughing at whatever it is that's amused him. It was rather fetching, Bossuet thought fondly. "I have. You know that they've opened a new bistro in the Latin Quarter called L'Auberge du Marin. You've not been, have you?"
"In a word, ma belle, no."
"Wonderful! But have you finished? You eluded the question."
"Ah, not yet. I've been neglecting my work. I've been surveying the landscape and daydreaming when I ought to be putting myself to it."
Joly's lips twitched fetchingly about the corners in the beginnings of a new, and bigger, smile. "Well, we'll wait only another half hour for you, and if you're not done by then, we'll leave without you."
"In that case, I'll be diligent. Hand me a pen; thank you. There!" He stretched his wrists and bent forward. "To work. After all, we ought to find out some time to-night whether Combeferre's earned his cheeses."
"Indeed," said Combeferre laughingly. "I'm quite eager to know."
"Well, then," Bossuet replied, and he cast one last look at Grantaire, pouring another glass, before he began to write.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2005-03-22 02:25 am (UTC)...that didn't come out right. :o
One French thing: "ma belle" is, well, feminine. I suppose Bossuet might call Joly that O_o, but just so you know, it's feminine.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-03-22 02:45 am (UTC)Yes, I know. ^_^ That's actually justified back in Joly's chapter, which, considering that was posted over a month ago is not something I expect to be remembered. Bossuet's all weird and Joly is his little sister.
^_^ Thank you!
(no subject)
Date: 2005-03-22 04:27 am (UTC)What was that?
Your icon is too distracting.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-03-22 05:34 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-03-22 04:43 am (UTC)So I'll just go with that. :)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-03-22 05:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-03-22 05:42 am (UTC)Oo. I really like this interpretation of Bossuet. Very sad.
And I also like all the other parts. Of course. :)
Er, homework! (Or Sebastian/Antonio, more likely!)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-03-22 05:37 pm (UTC)Thank you and good. You're having the right reactions. Splendid. *rubs hands happily*
^___^ Yey!
(SQUEEEEEE. SQUEEEE.)