"Best to simply be thankful these things occur so infrequently," Rene concluded with a radiant smile, his logic triumphant and irrefutable.

Rene du Rocher was a soft, placid, somewhat dandified man of sixty-two, a year younger than his wife-with shiny, thinning, plastered-down hair, a cherubic pink-and-white complexion, and small, delicate hands that he frequently rubbed together with a dry, rustly sound. He was clean in his habits, used cologne liberally, and took pride in the masculine vigor of his three-week-old moustache.

In all, he looked like an affable and self-contented bank manager, which in fact he was. Or close enough; Monsieur du Rocher was a corporate-lending officer in the international division of the Credit Lyonnais in Frankfurt, to which city he had moved three years earlier with his family, after three decades of unexceptional advancement in Paris, Geneva, and London. The advancing years had enhanced his naturally sweet temper and, less fortunately, his predisposition toward a slight vacancy of mind. At the urging of his superiors, he was now contemplating retirement.

"I’ve always liked this room," he said mildly. "Did you know that Henri IV and his party were once feasted here? In 1595. The manoir was already a hundred years old."

"Oh, be quiet," Mathilde said absently, picking an invisible shred of lint from the dark, broad, woolen field of her bosom.

Jules had consumed the olive. His eyes roved to the hors d’oeuvres tray on the coffee table. "The point is, " he said querulously to his father, "that Cousin Guillaume hasn’t asked the Fougerays to a family council in decades, or haven’t you noticed?" Emulating his mother, he had adopted this petulant, deprecatory tone toward his father at fourteen, had found it satisfactory, and had not modified it in the ensuing sixteen years. "And with good reason. Look at the man; the quintessential peasant. Aside from a certain repulsive fascination, it’s awkward to be in the same room with him. Is he really related to us?"