(no subject)

[tu_vas_triompher]

One thing had led to another. The afternoon finds Feuilly deep into the history of the FIFA World Cup, with an entire channel of klezmer music to listen to. He's been trying to untangle the complaints about the decisions to host the competition in Russia and Qatar, and humming along to the music, when he suddenly becomes aware of two things.

First, the song he's half-singing without thinking about it isn't quite what he was expecting.

Second, he's supposed to be expecting John Segundus any moment now; they'd made a plan to meet at his room and then go to the library. Now--how do you turn the music off--?

Comments

[not_the_second]

"All the more reason to protect that privacy you do have, I suppose." Hector noses at his knee, and he reaches down to give him an absent-minded pat. "But it is strange-- that there doesn't seem to have been more study made of the place itself."

[tu_vas_triompher]

"Joly," he says immediately. "My friend Joly is who you should meet; he has been studying the place. From a scientific point of view, more than a, a historical point of view. But--really, you should meet him anyway; he's wonderfully intelligent, and wonderfully--sympathetic?--he's always interested in any new question, any course of study."

[not_the_second]

"I shall seek him out," Segundus says, and repeats the name under his breath to be sure of it. "--your friends share your enthusiasm for study, then! Or perhaps that is how you came to know them, some manner of literary or educational society?"

[tu_vas_triompher]

"--Educational, yes. A society to advance the free education of children." It's hardly likely that an Englishman from 1815--from such a different 1815--could cause any trouble for French republicans fifteen years down the line, but still. On the other hand, many people here know more than that and have no reason to conceal it-- "We also share some political beliefs."

[not_the_second]

"Ah, I have no very strong interest in politics, I'm afraid," he says, and he does sound genuinely sorry that he has nothing to offer on the topic. "I imagine France must be much changed from what I know of it. The little I know."