"Spurs ! You're right! "

"I expect you are likely a cuirassier," says Lapin. "Perhaps you will regale us some day with stories of battles won."

Smiling as though in perfect concord, Charles answers:

"I had a pony once."

A slight pause. Then Rosbif comes gliding forward.

"Are you sure it was a pony, Monsieur? Your vest looks to be made entirely of goatskin."

"So it is," says Charles, newly astonished.

"I wonder, Monsieur, did you dress yourself in the dark?"

Far from resenting the question, he absorbs it, like an oyster wrapping itself round a piece of grit.

"Dress in the dark," he says, wonderingly. "What fun! Tomorrow, we shall all dress in the dark! "

And as I watch a scowl f lit across Rosbif 's face, I realize a wonder has come to light. The same qualities that leave Charles unprotected leave him unprovokable. The students succumb to a vexed silence, which is broken only after several minutes-by Nankeen, their chief.

"Do you know, Monsieur, I find your jaw of great interest."

The sharp intake of air-that's mine. But as fate would have it, I've overestimated Nankeen's powers of discernment. For in the next breath, he says:

"I saw a jaw just like it in the Bicetre asylum. Lovely lady. No longer able to wash or dress herself, but the jaw was quite useful for catching her drool."

Charles' brow creases for a second. Then, tilting his mouth down, he says:

"I had a dog that was shot in the jaw once. His name was Troilus."

Nankeen sets down his fork-the surest sign he is girding for another charge-and just as I'm moving to interpose my own body, someone beats me to it.

My mother.

Setting down her napkin, she announces:

"All guests in my home will kindly be respected."

The shock of her own pronouncement causes her cheeks to puff out, like a goddess of wind. Her head sinks over her plate, and amid the questions that weave silently across the table, mine is the one that registers most strongly in my inner ear:

Why has she never done that for me?

Th e pre vious tenan t of Charles' room was a general's widow who, in her haste to abscond, left behind a bed with a rather fine canopy of antique damask, as well as a silver vanity case and droppings of talcum. These last lie scattered about the room like plaster dust and emit a scent so sharply feminine that I fight the urge to bow whenever I enter the room.

"The room's a bit-sorry-Charlotte will get to it-tomorrow at the latest. . . ."

I set his carpetbag on the bed, and because he makes no move toward it, I unpack for him. Blouses, trousers, striped linen underdrawers, and a large morocco cap, the kind a six-year-old boy might wear to go sledding. No more than three days' worth of clothing, all in all, and not a single keepsake. Not even the hint of an estate.

"Well, now," I say, after I put the clothes in the dresser. "That should do it."

"Are there scorpions?" he asks.

"Are there . . . you mean here? Not that I've seen."

"Then I'm sure I shall enjoy it."

Sitting on the edge of the bed, he gives the mattress a pair of speculative bounces.

"Where do you sleep, Hector?"

It's the first time he's addressed me by name.

"Upstairs. In the garret."

"Well, that's fine, then. Am I to go to bed now?"