Henri shrugged his shoulders. 'Brieux will film the play I wrote or nothing at all.'

'You aren't going to spit on two million just because they want you to bring a dead man back to life!'

'He pretends to scorn money,' Claudie said, 'But what with the price of butter nowadays, it certainly comes in handy. Even when the Fritzes were here, it cost less.'

'Don't talk like that in front of a resistentialist,' Lucie said.

This time they all laughed together, and Henri smiled with them. If they could have heard them, seen him, they would all have blamed him together- Lambert as well as Vincent, Volange as much as Lachaume, and Paula, Anne, Dubreuilh and Samazelle, and even Luc, and that whole anonymous throng of those who were expecting something of him. That was precisely why he was there, with those people - because he shouldn't have been. He was wrong, radically wrong, without reservations, without excuses. What a relief! Sooner or later, you get fed up with constantly asking yourself, 'Am I right or wrong?' That one evening at least, he knew the answer, 'I'm wrong, completely wrong.' He had made a clean break with Dubreuilh, the SRL had disavowed him, and most of his old comrades felt a shiver of shame when they thought of him. At L'Enclume, Lachaume and his friends - and how many others throughout Paris, throughout France - were calling him a traitor. In the wings of Studio 46, machine guns were rattling, the Germans were burning a French village, and anger and horror were reawakening in sluggish hearts. Everywhere, hate was flaring. Yes, that was his reward: hate. And there was no way of overcoming it. Drink. He understood Scriassine; he refilled his glass again.