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underwear. He wasn’t prepared to repeat the experience.
    “Very well, Georgette. I shall have my chauffeur drive me up to Paris next week and buy a complete summer wardrobe. From Charvet.”
    “No doubt,” she said. “And I shall win the Tour de France.” Scooping up the pile from the floor, she disappeared, cackling in triumph, to the kitchen.
    Bennett looked at his watch and saw that it was eleven o’clock. The post should have arrived by now, and replies were due. His advertisement had run more than two weeksago, and he had spent the period since then mostly with a client from Zurich, who had finally decided that his idea of rural bliss was not Provence but an apartment in Geneva. As Georgette cranked the radio up to working level in the kitchen, Bennett let himself out and made his way down the street toward what he hoped would be a sackful of replies and a glittering future.
    Monsieur Papin peered at him through the window of the
guichet
, nodded good morning, and retrieved a newspaper and a large brown envelope from a cubbyhole behind him. He surrendered the newspaper, weighed the envelope in his hand. “An important packet,” he said, “from Paris.”
    “Ah bon
,
”
said Bennett.
    “Seven francs fifty to pay, for insufficient postage. Or if you wish, I can send it back.”
    This was known in the village as Papin’s
pourboire
, the little extra he added on when he thought the market would bear it. Three francs here, five francs there—it came to enough to buy himself a few good bottles at Christmas. Bennett handed over the seven francs fifty and asked for a receipt. Papin, scowling, said he would eventually prepare one. The two men parted in an atmosphere of chilly politeness. Bennett rarely disliked anyone, but for Papin he could make an exception.
    The café was quiet, the only sounds coming from the wheeze of the refrigerator and the slap of cards from the table in the back. The old men turned their heads in unison as Bennett came in. He nodded. The headsturned back. Bennett took his glass of
rosé
and settled at a window table. The envelope felt bulky and promising, and before opening it and tipping out the contents, he offered up a silent toast to the patron saint of impoverished Englishmen.
    An invitation to invest a quarter of a million francs in Pizza Sympa, the fastest-growing chain on the Côte d’Azur, was the first to be put to one side as a nonstarter. It was followed by a letter, written in lavender ink, from a man in Neuilly in search of a younger companion to share nature pursuits. An escort agency in Cannes promised substantial remuneration for gentlemen of taste and breeding, and requested a nude photograph for their files. Bennett thought of giving this to Papin.
    Here was a job he could at least do with his clothes on. A Saudi prince needed a chauffeur-interpreter for the summer—based on Cap Ferrat, choice of three Mercedes, free lodging, uniform allowance, references essential. That might do, Bennett thought, if only he could manage the references. Georgette? Léon? His septic tank clients? He still had a small supply of crested House of Lords writing paper, left behind by an earl who had rented one of the houses last summer. He could use that and write his own reference. The princely letter went to start a pile of possibles.
    But the pile failed to grow, as Bennett sifted through the next batch of replies. He decided against becoming a Jehovah’s Witness, a tour guide, a part-time instructor at a language school, or a tout for a pleasure boat operator inAntibes, memories of the boat business still being too fresh and painful. Finally, a single envelope—the envelope Bennett had saved until last—remained.
    Of that rich, self-confident true blue favored by the English establishment, it made Bennett think of Smythson’s in Bond Street, where pinstriped men gather to brood over such arcane but vital details as blind embossing and deckled edges. He opened the envelope carefully