Francis was not one of those individuals who kept up, minute by minute, with how their colleagues were doing, no matter how close his relationship with them might be.
He was used to minding his own business, turning in his articles on time without paying attention to the quality of other people’s work. And the only times he ventured to offer sincere advice or lend someone a hand were when he was directly asked to do so.

Julien had not explicitly asked him for comfort, but Francis had felt obliged to offer a few words of support, going beyond his initial role of merely answering his doubts. That alone was unusual enough, but what happened next? Francis had never been so embarrassed in his life—aside from other incidents during that same trip.
Just thinking that all those years he had spent arguing with someone who had always admired him made him want to dig a hole and hide in it for the rest of his days.

At least, he thought, he had the consolation that Julien bore him no grudge.
That last day they spent together had its imperfections, but in the end, they managed to settle their differences: after mass and a dinner where conversation flowed more easily than in previous days, they went together to watch the Christmas log being lit in the town square.

It was a simple ceremony, but it aroused much expectation. So much so that nearly all of Saint-Genix came at some point to that fire to make their contribution, tossing on a few more twigs or silently making a wish for the coming year. When it ended, the villagers dispersed: some headed home, others set off for the church for the last Christmas Eve mass.
There were even people who stayed in the square until the very last splinter of wood was burned.

Julien and Francis returned to the inn, speaking little, too tired after spending the whole day going from place to place. They slept in their shared room and, once morning came and the news spread that the train was running, they resumed their journey to Chambéry.
It almost felt as if those final hours in the same compartment had passed in a trance, because by the time Francis realized it, Julien and he were already saying goodbye at the station.

In theory, they would see each other again in a week, when they both happened to travel back at the same time—since, evidently, fate had played another trick on them, making them buy the same return tickets to their respective cities. But even that would be a brief encounter and, until then, there would be no other chance to continue building rapport.

As soon as they got off the train in Chambéry, each went their own way: one towards his relatives’ home, the other to meet the friends who had so kindly invited him for the holidays.
It was a bit later than planned, but it seemed that everything was returning to its natural course. What had happened in the past forty-eight hours could remain just an anecdote, like a trip that had spun out of control and wasn’t worth remembering except, perhaps, on some isolated occasion when Francis found himself drunk with someone who wouldn’t remember the story the next morning anyway.

Maybe, after spending so many hours together, parting with Julien in that way felt a little anticlimactic. Still, they weren’t friends, were they?
When they returned to Lyon and Paris respectively, they would resume their rivalry—though refraining, of course, from sending veiled messages in every new issue: from now on, if anyone had something to say, he would write to the other in private… Only that writing personal letters wasn’t something Francis felt comfortable with, as it was something he reserved only for those dearest and closest to him.

Not that he minded corresponding with Julien—he was already quite used to his quirks! It was just that he would have to get used to such a thing, to having a friendship by correspondence, or whatever one might call it.
Francis had no practice maintaining friendships with people who lived so many kilometers away and whom he had once considered mortal enemies. But he believed he could learn.

“What’s the matter?” Solène suddenly inquired; if she had meant to startle him, she had succeeded. “Are you missing someone?”

Solène Castel, one of Francis’s best friends, had set aside her inventory of a nearby pantry to ask him these questions. Which, on the other hand, was not unusual: Francis had already been three days in the home of these friends and, in all that time, he seemed more caught up in his thoughts than enjoying the moment with them.

“Who could I possibly miss?” Francis replied, with dignity, in a phrase that sounded halfway between a defensive question and a challenge for her to press on with her interrogation. “I’ve just spent almost forty-eight hours practically kidnapped in the company of a journalistic rival who wouldn’t shut up even underwater. There’s quite a bit of peace and quiet now that I’ve lost sight of him!”

“I was thinking about your family,” Solène smiled, pleased to have caught him red-handed: for someone so distrustful, Francis was always surprisingly easy to catch in a lie. “Considering we’ve whisked you away from them for the holidays.”

“They don’t hold it against you, as you’ve probably noticed from the number of gifts they stuffed in my suitcase for me to give you.”

Francis felt flustered at his slip. And although he was already helping Solène clean the shelves and label a few jars that were missing tags, at that moment he wished he were busy somewhere else, where no one could see him.

“And we’re grateful to them; before you leave in January, I’ll also have to give you some presents to take to them,” she continued, in good humor. “Now, since you mentioned that journalist… Julien, wasn’t it?”

When had his tongue slipped enough to reveal that name? Francis couldn’t remember, but he was convinced it must have been on the very first day, right after arriving in Chambéry.

“That’s the one, yes.”

“Théo and I know him,” said Solène, referring to her husband. Seeing Francis’s evident surprise, she elaborated: “Not personally, but by name. More than once I’ve read his poetry in Le Progrès, and Théo even has some newspaper clippings saved with our favorite verses.”

“No way… You two? Both of you?”

“We have a shelf full of volumes of poetry. So I hope your friend Julien publishes soon, so we can add his book there. We love collecting clippings and loose pages from the press, but you can’t imagine how chaotic that becomes when space runs out.”

“You’re fans of his poetry, yet you wouldn’t read me even by chance!” Francis tried to sound offended, but failed: regardless of what they did or didn’t do with his articles, nothing could stop the joy he felt upon learning they held Julien in such high esteem without ever having met him in person.

“Of course we read you, don’t be obtuse,” Solène protested, without a hint of acrimony. “It’s just that your newspaper isn’t so easy to get around here. And the few times we do buy it, it’s not like your columns make us want to pin them to the wall as keepsakes.”

“No, I feel the same way. I do have some articles pinned up in my office, in case I need to consult them, and sometimes I even feel uneasy touching them.”

“The problem isn’t how you write, but what you write about. Too much misery all at once, really.”

That was what his section was about, after all. Francis himself was aware that his texts were best read once, to stay informed of the latest from the front, and then the paper passed along to someone else and forgotten within a few hours.