Fiction

Late in the evening, almost at midnight, five old friends settled by a fading fireplace and began, one by one, sharing stories.

Many people believe that this no longer happens. In the past, it used to occur only rarely—at the beginning of the last century, and then increasingly often toward its middle; in the days of Turgenev it seemed altogether ordinary: somewhere, old friends would inevitably gather by the fireplace and tell each other stories. Nowadays, though, you hardly ever hear about it—neither here nor abroad, in France, for instance. At least, the storytellers never mention anything like that to us anymore. Perhaps they’re afraid to stretch the narrative and bore a busy reader; perhaps they want, at any cost, to pass a friendly tale off as their own invention; or maybe there simply aren’t any people left who genuinely enjoy sitting together by the fire and who know how to listen to others’ stories—who can say? But even if it happens rarely, it still does occur in our time. At least, it did that evening, the one we’re about to talk about…