[...] Meanwhile, people were working, making useful commodities; or sometimes useless commodities. They were productive. What had I produced in the forty years of my existence? To tell the truth, not very much. I had managed information, facilitated access to it and disseminated it; sometimes, too, I had carried out bank transfers (on a modest scale; I was generally happy to pay the smaller invoices). In a word, I had worked in the service sector. It would be easy to get by without people like me. Still, my ineffectuality was less flamboyant than that of Babette and Lea; a moderate parasite I had never; been a high-flyer in my job, and had never felt the need to pretend to be.