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It took me a week to make up my mind I would seek out Nicolas de Lenfent

I put on the red velvet fur-lined cloak and fur lined suede boots, and I went down the winding e towards the inn

The shop owned by Nicolas’s father was right across from the inn, but I didn’t see or hear Nicolas

I had no lass of wine and I wasn’t sure just how to proceed when the innkeeper cae before me

Of course these people had always treated s had changed on account of the wolves, and strangely enough, this made me feel even more alone than I usually felt

But as soon as I poured the first glass, Nicolas appeared, a great blaze of color in the open doorway

He was not so finely dressed as before, thank heaven, yet everything about him exuded wealth Silk and velvet and brand-new leather

But he was flushed as if he’d been running and his hair indblown and messy, and his eyes full of excitement He bowed to me, waited for me to invite him to sit down, and then he askedthe wolves?" And folding his arms on the table, he stared at me

"Why don’t you tell me what’s it like in Paris, Monsieur?" I said, and I realized right away that it soundedand rude "I’m sorry," I said io to the university? Did you really study with Mozart? What do people in Paris do? What do they talk about? What do they think?"

He laughed softly at the barrage of questions I had to laugh lass and pushed the bottle towards hio to the theaters in Paris? Did you see the Comedie-Francaise?"

"Many times," he answered a little dis in any minute There’ll be tooyour supper in a private room upstairs I should so like to do it -- "

And before I couldWe were shown up to a crude but comfortable little chamber

I was almost never in small wooden rooms, and I loved it immediately The table was laid for thethe place, unlike the roaring blazes in our castle, and the thick glass of the as clean enough to see the blue winter sky over the snow-coveredyou want to know about Paris," he said agreeably, waiting for o to the university" He made a little sneer as if it had all been contemptible "And I did study with Mozart, ould have told me I was hopeless if he hadn’t needed pupils Nohere do you want in? The stench of the city, or the infernal noise of it? The hungry crowds that surround you everywhere? The thieves in every alley ready to cut your throat?"

I waved all that away His smile was very different fro

"A really big Paris theater" I said "Describe it to mewhat is it like?"

I think we stayed in that room for four solid hours and all we did was drink and talk

He drew plans of the theaters on the tabletop with a wet finger, described the plays he had seen, the famous actors, the little houses of the boulevards Soon he was describing all of Paris and he’d forgotten to be cynical,him as he talked of the Ile de la Cite, and the Latin Quarter, the Sorbonne, the Louvre

We went on to s, how the newspapers reported events, how his student cronies gathered in cafes to argue He told me men were restless and out of love with the overn He told me about the philosophers, Diderot, Voltaire, Rousseau

I couldn’t understand everything he said But in rapid, soaveon

Of course, it didn’t surprise me to hear that educated people didn’t believe in God, that they were infinitely more interested in science, that the aristocracy was much in ill favor, and so was the Church These were times of reason, not superstition, and the more he talked thethe Encyclopedie, the great coe supervised by Diderot And then it was the salons he’d gone to, the drinking bouts, his evenings with actresses He described the public balls at the Pal with the common people

"I’ll tell you," he said finally, "it all sounds a hell of a lot better in this room than it really is"

"I don’t believe you," I said gently I didn’t want hio on and on

"It’s a secular age, Monsieur," he said, filling our glasses froerous"

"Why dangerous?" I whispered "An end to superstition? What could be better than that?"

"Spoken like a true eighteenth-century man, Monsieur," he said with a faintany Even atheism is a fashion"

I had always had a secular mind, but not for any philosophical reason No one in my family much believed in God or ever had Of course they said they did, and ent to o died out in our family, as it had perhaps in the families of thousands of aristocrats Even at the monastery I had not believed in God I had believed in the monks around e that would not give offense to Nicolas, because for his farubbing father (whoious

"But can men live without these beliefs?" Nicolas asked almost sadly "Can children face the world without the to understand why he was so sarcastic and cynical He had only recently lost that old faith He was bitter about it

But no y poured out of him, an irrepressible passion And this drew lasses of wine and Iabsolutely ridiculous like that

"I’ve always lived without beliefs," I said

"Yes I know," he answered "Do you remember the story of the witches? The time you cried at the witches’ place?"

"Cried over the witches?" I looked at hi painful, so Too many ofover witches "I don’t remember," I said

"We were little boys And the priest was teaching us our prayers And the priest took us out to see the place where they burnt the witches in the old days, the old stakes and the blackened ground"