Michel doesn’t deal in illusions, he’s too much of a pessimist, according to some. He doesn’t draw beautiful buildings, like Julien, or play cadenzas like Elio. Lawyers say things directly, and although he does hate his job, that at least he has learned from it.

So, he smiles, “We married because she was pregnant, and my family reputation couldn’t bear a bastard. Avril made it a passable twenty years, but little more than that, and we were both relieved to be free of it, when it ended.”

Lifting his glass, he toasts Himeno. Let it never be you, it means.