"And do you intend to shock and scandalize your village one of these days?"

"If my ideal, irresistible, heaven-wrought woman were to come along, family tradition would oblige me to sweep her off her feet and carry her off to be my cherished companion forever."

"And what if she didn't want to be swept off her feet? What if she'd rather retain her balance? And her dignity? And her free will. And her sense of independent worth."

"Well, it's obvious that your sister has none of those petty inhibitions against being swept off her feet."

"No, I'm afraid you're right. She's just let herself be carried along on waves of joy and rapture and..." She noticed the bit of chicken cooling at the end of her fork and ate it meditatively, watching the snow streak past the window. Then she said in a voice soft with awe, "...the Century of Woman."

He blinked, trying to close the a-propos-de-quoi?gap. But he couldn't. "All right, I give up."

"In three days we shall enter the Twentieth Century, which will be the Century of Woman."

"Ah, yes, of course. Except that the Twentieth Century doesn't begin in three days. It begins in a year and three days, on the first of January 1901."

"I've heard that, but I refuse to believe it. It may make some sort of petty mathematical sense, but poetic logic is all against it."

"There's no such thing as 'poetic logic'."

"Not for you, maybe. Just think... my daughters and granddaughters and great-granddaughters will be born in the Century of Woman. Maybe one of them will become president of France."

"Only president of France? Empress of all Europe, surely."

She nodded, accepting the additional responsibility philosophically.

"Funny, isn't it?" he said, after a short silence, during which she separated the last of her chicken from the bone with surgical finesse.

"The thought of my great-granddaughter becoming empress of Europe?"

"No, that thought is more sinister than funny. What's funny is that now that we've had time to recover from the shock of those letters announcing that my brother and your sister intended to elope, he with a scheming vixen, she with a Basque brigand, all we really want is for them to hold off for a few weeks-a sort of cooling off period. After that, if they are still determined to launch themselves into the stormy seas of matrimony, they can have a proper wedding, with your family and mine gathered to see them off on the long voyage down the stony road of life."

"I think you just launched their vessel down a stony road. Isn't that what's called a jumbled metaphor?"

"Mixed. I thought you didn't know anything about metaphors."

"It would appear that neither of us does. But, all right, I'd be willing to let them marry, if, that is, I find your brother to be worthy of my sister"

"Oh, you will, you will. He's so very... well, frankly, he's just like me."

She made a low, growling sound. Then she asked, "Aren't you going to finish your daube?"

"Hm-m? Oh, no. No, I don't think so."

She exchanged her empty plate for his half-full one. "Do you really imagine that when the snobs arrive on the next train, they'll be as solicitous and understanding as you and I are?"

"Certainly not. They'll pout and stamp and huff. But I can deal with my sister. And I have no doubt that you can manage your brother."

"That's true. So the upshot of all our panic and desperate rushing off to Cambo will be to provide you with material for a cheap farce?"

"Cheap? Not at all cheap! I envision a lavish production. A practical, lurching train interior is no cheap thing, you know. And I'll have the smell of cooking food coming into the theater through the heating vents-real Dion Boucicaut stuff-and an endless diorama canvas of countryside rolling past the windows."

"Even though it's night?"

"Uh... all right, we'll save the production costs of the diorama and just sprinkle a little water on the darkened windows and cast the occasional light over them to indicate a passing village. And the last scene? Ah, the last scene! A lavish multiple wedding. It will be spectacular. And very funny, of course."

"A multiple wedding?"

"Of course! The situation cries out for it! First to come down the aisle will be the headstrong, romantic young scapegraces who caused all the trouble in the first place. Then come the snobbish doctor brother and the social-climbing sister, who will pledge themselves to struggle upward and dullward until they achieve the highest and dullest ranks of society. (We can have some great slapstick stuff when the old eccentric they ridicule because they think he's the village idiot turns out to be the eccentric trillionaire Viscomte de Fric von Gottlot.) Then comes the touching moment (dim the lights; handkerchiefs at the ready, Ladies!) that touching moment when, inspired by the happiness of young lovers all around them, the lonely older couple (my mother and your father) decide to fill one another's autumnal years out of respect for their departed spouses. And there it is! A triple wedding with a grand— Oh-oh, wait a minute! I forgot someone."

"I was wondering when-"

"I've got to find someone for your Aunt Adelaide. Hm-m. Ah! I have a crusty old bachelor uncle, Hippolyte. The meeting and mating of your Aunt Adelaide will provide us with a comic subplot: the love-sick spinster and the quaint-but-loveable codger who by sheerest coincidence happens to-"

"That's exactly what's wrong with farce! It's all based on cheap, trumped-up coincidences."

"But coincidence is the means by which Fate influences the lives of mortals."

"No, I don't accept all that nonsense about coincidence being 'the Engine of Fate'. That's just an excuse for story weavers to use hackneyed conventions. Like the convention of the happy ending, and the old ploy of mistaken identity, and the toad that turns out to be a prince, when in life-in grim, hard, real life-the prince more often turns out to be a toad, and probably a toady as well."

"Yes, but life-even grim, hard, 'real' life-teems with coincidences. Take our meeting tonight in the cab. If that wasn't a coinci— Say, that's not bad." He took out his notebook and scribbled 'toad-toady' as the waiter took their dinner plates and waited until he had their full attention before chanting the dessert menu.

They chose creme brulee, the waiter left, and she said, "What about our meeting?"

"You'll have to admit that our meeting involved a veritable medley of coincidences."

"I admit nothing of the sort. Given the fact that my sister and your brother sent telegrams announcing their intention to hurl themselves into an ill-considered marriage, there was nothing more natural than that you and my brother would rush to Cambo-les-Bains to make them listen to reason. No coincidence there, just the natural way of things. And, of course, you both went to the Lafitte-Caillard agency because that's where everyone makes their travel arrangements. Again, no coincidence. While you were dawdling up in the travel office, the cabs moved to the head of the line, as they always do, and all Paris fiacres are the same design and color, so it's hardly a coincidence that you, childishly miffed over an encounter with my brother and desperate to catch your train, should jump into the wrong cab. The fact that I was asleep in the corner of the cab was no coincidence, either. It was the natural result of my not getting a wink of sleep last night, worrying about poor Sophie."

"That wasn't a twist on the old farce dodge of mistaken identity, eh?"

"Not in the least. And it's no coincidence that you and my brother had the train tickets, while your sister and I didn't even have money for dinner. It's a result of stupid, unjust, oppressive attitudes about what men can and ought to do and what women can't and shouldn't. No, no, there was no 'Engine of Fate' operating in our encounter. It was just the logical working out of a set of givens."