He had finally decided to rent a studio flat and leave his wife; he would not get the keys until January 1st, but he was a lot better, I sensed he was already more relaxed. He was relatively young, handsome and extremely rich: all of these things do not necessarily make life easier, I realised, a little alarmed; but they help, at least, in awakening desire in others. I still could not understand his ambition, the furious energy he invested in making a success of his career. It wasn't for the money I don't think: he paid high taxes and didn't have expensive tastes. Neither was it out of commitment to the company, nor from a more general altruism: it was difficult to imagine the development of global tourism as a noble cause. His ambition existed in its own right, it couldn't be pinned down to one specific source: it was probably more like the desire to build something, rather than to a taste for power or a competitive nature - I had never heard him talk about the careers of his former friends at the HEC business school, and I don't think he gave them a second thought. All in all, it was a respectable motive, not unlike the one that explains the advance of human civilisation. The social reward bestowed on him was a large salary; under other regimes it might have taken the form of an aristocratic title, or of privileges like those accorded to the members of the nomenklatura; I didn't get the impression that it would have made much difference. In reality, Jean-Yves worked because he had a taste for work; it was something both mysterious and clear.