‘Are you sure,’ said Grace, ‘about these numbers? I’ve never heard of them. Placement doesn’t bother us because nobody minds where they sit, at home.’
‘People always mind. I mean the numbers in the beginning of the peerage. I subscribe to your peerage, such a beautiful book, and then I know where I am with English visitors. I only wish we had such a thing here, but we have not, and as a result the complications of precedence are terrible. There is the old French nobility and that of the Holy Roman Empire (Lorraine, Savoy, and so on). These are complicated enough in themselves, but then we have the titles created by Napoleon, at the Restoration, by the July monarchy and Napoleon III. There are the Bourbon bastards and the Bonaparte bastards. I think you have no special place for your big bastards in England?’
‘I don’t think there are any.’
He looked at her with pity and reeled off some well-known English family names. Grace saw that she was doing badly in this witness box.
‘Mrs Jordan alone had about eighteen children,’ he said. ‘After all, royal blood is not nothing. But to come back to France. Suppose you have asked three dukes to dinner, which do you put first? You ring up the protocol – good, but the dukes meanwhile ring you up, each putting forward his claim. Then, my dear, you will positively long to be back in England, where you can have any number of dukes and members of the Academy at the same time. Where do you place Academicians, in England?’
‘R.A.s?’ said Grace. ‘I don’t know any.’
‘Indeed! Now here, when you get to the dining-room, those of your guests who think themselves badly placed, if they don’t leave at once, will turn their plates in protest and refuse the first course (though if it looks very delicious they may take it when it is handed round again).’
‘Goodness!’ said Grace, ‘so what is the solution?’
‘Do not ask more than one duke at a time.’
‘But supposing they are friends?’
‘Never will they be friends to that extent. But it shows how you are fortunate over there, you could ask all twenty-six – am I not right in saying there are twenty-six?’
‘I haven’t the faintest idea,’ said Grace.
‘I think so. You could ask all twenty-six to the same dinner without making a single enemy. Unimaginable. To go on with our lesson. Whereas in England the host and hostess sit at the ends of the table, here they face each other across the middle, the ends being reserved for low people, those who have married for love and so on. Two years of love, we say here, are no compensation for a lifetime at the end of the table.’
‘Might not the end be more amusing?’
‘No. It is not amusing to be with one’s near relations and the people other people have married for love. Because near relations of the house go to the end, you and Charles-Edouard would be there tonight, except that this dinner is being given in your honour. Juliette, as you see, is there; as you also see, she is far from liking it.’
The young woman he indicated was the prettiest of them all, and the most dressed-up. She wore white tulle with swags of blue taffeta which matched her eyes, her skin looked as if a light were shining through it, and her hair fell on her shoulders in fat, chestnut curls. She was very lively and very young, hardly more than a child.
‘Who is she?’
‘Juliette Novembre de la Ferté, daughter-in-law of the house. The other end is her husband, watching with his jealous eye, poor Jean, and much good will it do him. She is the great success of the year.’
‘How old is she?’
‘Eighteen? – nineteen? Very soon she will have to begin her family, poor dear. Jean will have to take her to the country if he wants the necessary number, and wants them to be his.’
‘Necessary number?’
‘Yes, hasn’t Charles-Edouard explained? We all have to have six nowadays if we are to prevent everything – but everything – being taken away in taxation. So most of us took advantage of the war years and just devoted ourselves to procreation. My wife and I have four (we prayed for twins – in vain, alas). Very soon we shall have to make up our minds again. Oh, how we were bored, I never shall forget it. We had our house full of Germans, how they were middle-class and dreary.’
Grace, who regarded Germans as frightening rather than dreary, was very much surprised, and more so when he went on:
‘There was one not so bad, a Graf, who sang little lieder after dinner, a charming baritone. But we had moments of grave disquietude, you know, caused by the maquisards. They were well-intentioned, but so tactless – at one moment we thought they would kill our baritone, and then, only think, there might have been a battle!’
‘In wars,’ said Grace, ‘you rather expect battles.’
‘Not in one’s own château, my dear! How we were relieved when the Germans went away – just packed up one day and went – and we saw two nice young Guards officers of good family, Etonians, coming up the drive. Because please don’t think I was on the side of the Germans. Why, when I saw them swarming over the hill (we lived in the unoccupied zone), I put out my hand and took down my gun. There and then I made a vow never to shoot again until they were out of France.’
‘You mean, never to shoot birds again?’
‘And rabbits and pigs, yes. You may not think much of this vow, but I
