Free La Chamade by Françoise Sagan Page A

New York, alone, the trip reduced to four days. Lucile wandered through the hazy blue streets of Paris in the open car. She awaited summer, recognised its approach in every scent, in every shimmer of the Seine. She imagined already the smell of dust, trees and earth that would soon invade the Boulevard Saint-Germain, the night, the tall chestnut trees outlined against the pink sky and all but concealing it; the street lamps always lit too early, their professional pride humbled by changing from valuable guides in winter to summer parasites—squeezed between the lingering nightfall and the dawn already impatient on the horizon. The first evening, she roamed about Saint-Germain-des-Prés, met friends from the university and from later days, who greeted her with shouts as though she was the ghost she soon felt herself to be. After the exchange of a few jokes, a few memories, she realised that their lives were dominated by a profession, money worries, girl friends, and that her own unconcern was more of an annoyance to them than a distraction. One broke through a money barrier as one did through a sound barrier: each word spoken returned a few seconds late, too late, to the speaker.
    She declined to dine with them at the old bistro on the Rue Cujas; she went home at eight-thirty, a little depressed. An approving Pauline cooked a steak for her in the kitchen, and she lay down on her bed, the window wide open. Night spread rapidly over the carpet, street noises died away and she remembered the morning wind of two months before. Not a settled, languid wind like the present one, but a brash, swift and frisky wind that had forced her to get up, just as this one lulled her to sleep. Between the two, there had been Antoine; and life. She was to dine with him next day. Alone, for the first time. It troubled her. She was more afraid of boring than of being bored. But, on the other hand, life was so kind to her, there was such sweetness in lying on her bed gradually being hemmed in by the shadows, she so much approved of the idea that the world was round and life complicated that it was impossible to imagine anything unfortunate happening to her, for any reason.
    There are moments of perfect happiness, remembered sometimes in loneliness and more important than any others, which can save you from despair in a crisis. For you know that you have been happy, alone and without reason. You know that it is possible. And happiness—which seems so closely connected with someone who makes you unhappy, so irrevocably, almost organically dependent on this person—reappears to you as a thing smooth, round, intact, free and in your power (remote, surely, but possible). And this memory is more comforting than that of a happiness shared before, with someone else, for this someone, no longer loving, is seen in error and the happy memory based on nothing.
    She was to call for Antoine at six o'clock the next day. They would take Lucile's car and drive to the country for dinner. They would have the whole night to themselves. She fell asleep smiling.
    The gravel crunched under the waiters' feet, bats swooped about the terrace lights and at the next table, a congested-looking couple silently devoured an omelette flambée. It was about ten miles from Paris, it had turned rather cool and the proprietress placed a shawl over Lucile's shoulders. The inn was one among a dozen others that offered a more or less sure chance of discretion and fresh air to adulterous or weary Parisians. The wind had ruffled Antoine's hair, he laughed. Lucile told him about her childhood, a happy one.
    'My father was a notary. He had a passion for La Fontaine. He used to walk along the banks of the Indre reciting his fables. Later, he wrote some himself, changing the characters, of course. I'm surely one of the only women in France who knows by heart a fable called The Lamb and the Crow . You're lucky.'
    'I'm very lucky,' said Antoine, 'I know it. Go on.'
    'He died when I was twelve,