The days that followed passed with astonishing speed.

One day it seemed that Julien and Francis had made peace, and less than twenty-four hours later they were already sharing the same compartment, on their way back to their respective cities.

Despite continuing with their jokes and provocations—which already seemed intrinsic to the way they related to one another—there was no longer any hint of rivalry. Much less of aggression, from either side.

Both journalists were able to coexist in a perfectly ordinary way—within reason—for the remainder of their holidays. And even on the train, during the few hours they remained seated facing each other, they talked as one might with an old friend whom one had never, ever vilified in the national press.

How the story changed once a couple of misunderstandings were cleared up!

Francis almost regretted watching Julien leave, stepping off at the Lyon stop when the train halted at that station. They parted on good terms, with a firm handshake that one of them—or perhaps both—wanted to prolong as much as possible.

Had it not been for the hurry they were in, or for the fact that they were not entirely alone in that carriage, Francis was certain Julien would have pulled him into a sincere embrace instead. He had seen him make the move. And worst of all was that, had it actually happened, he would have reciprocated.

Those Christmas holidays had truly made a mess of Francis’s head.

He, who had never been interested in maintaining long-term romantic relationships, now seemed to be able to think of little else.

Though he would not admit it to anyone, he was saddened by parting from Julien. And in the days that followed, as he returned to his apartment and resumed his work routine at the newspaper, he feared that after those Christmases things would go back to how they had been before the war with him had begun.

That, despite having agreed to continue their peculiar press skirmish, Julien might back out and, at the last moment, decide it was no longer worth speaking to him that way—thus creating a tense silence that Francis would not be sure was wise to break.

But such worries proved to be in vain when, barely a week after returning to Paris, the poems laden with veiled references to him resumed with greater reach than ever. Julien was no longer content to focus on unrelated current affairs and take aim at Francis over differences of opinion: now that he knew him, Julien ventured into more personal territory, commenting on some gesture or remark he had perceived in Francis—one that betrayed him more than he himself believed.

Perhaps such perceptiveness should have irritated Francis. Certainly, had this happened a year earlier—or even a month earlier—it would have. But that was not the case here.

On the contrary, Francis found himself smiling at the page as soon as he read it, thinking how satisfying it was that someone could be paying such close attention to him as to be able to discern him with such ease.

All in all, this might not have been the most common reaction to being exposed in the press. However, he could not exactly call his relationship with Julien an ordinary one either.

Once the ice had been broken, Francis felt free again to write whatever he pleased, returning to that old dynamic in which he felt so comfortable. Months passed this way, the only change being that now those barbs were perceived more as friendly sparring than as a deliberate attack meant to cause harm.

With this shift, the anticipation of seeing what new rebuttal Julien would come up with grew exponentially. And, almost without realizing it, nearly a year had passed since the last time they had seen each other in person. And Christmas—this time in a very different place from years past—was about to come around.

“Do me a favor and get down from there right now,” Francis was scolding a gray cat. “I don’t feed you the best leftovers just so you can then think you’re entitled to establish anarchy in this household.”

Lucifer looked at him languidly from his perch atop a bookshelf in the bedroom—a place he was, incidentally, strictly forbidden to climb. Francis had repeated this countless times, but once again, it was hardly as if a cat—the same one who by this hour had probably already proclaimed himself master and lord of the house—was going to pay him any mind.

No, for a moment it might have seemed that Lucifer was listening. But in the end, instead of jumping down to a more appropriate surface, all he did was yawn and lie down on the very shelf he had already claimed as his own.

“Incredible. It’s like talking to a wall. A stubborn wall, on top of that!” Francis went on, aggrieved, as though this were not his daily bread. “I knew the best option was to leave you at the farm, but no—you had to sweet-talk me into taking you with me.”

Lucifer meowed in protest. Perhaps, had he been human, he would have pointed out that he had been perfectly comfortable at the farm, that Solène had accepted him as one more member of the family, and that the only reason he was no longer there was because Francis had had a change of heart on the very last day.

“Don’t you dare,” Francis started again, seeing that the cat was not only ignoring him in this matter, but had already placed his paw on a certain little figurine that stood there as decoration.

But Lucifer did dare. And with a quick movement, he nudged the wooden heron just enough for it to fall from the shelf. And if luck did not have it shatter against the floor, it was because Francis was faster: the moment he realized what Lucifer was about to do, he caught the figurine in midair, well before disaster could strike.

This was a relief, because although it was questionable whether the object would have broken had it hit the floor, that did not take away from the fright of nearly losing it.

“You must be pleased with yourself,” he scolded the cat, once he had made sure there was not a single scratch in the wood and placed the figure on another shelf, out of Lucifer’s reach, just in case.

Lucifer must indeed have been pleased. For once he had finished wreaking havoc in the kingdom, he finally climbed down from the shelf—this time jumping onto Francis’s desk and settling himself atop the last half-written page Francis had left there.

At least, Francis thought, there would be no risk of him knocking anything else over there.

Francis kept everything neatly arranged in the part of the apartment he used as an office, for if admitting a pet into his sacred home had served him for anything, it was to make him even more organized than he already was.

Aware of Lucifer’s tricks, he always kept the inkwell safely stored in a drawer when he was not using it. And in one corner of the desk there remained carefully arranged, inside a small box acquired solely for this purpose, several dozen letters that Francis guarded as though they were a treasure.

These letters—Francis could deceive visitors into thinking they were simple communications from readers: people who read his columns and who, for whatever reason, decided to send him a personalized message as a result.

But the truth was that he did not usually bring such letters home. Much less keep them for posterity. And if in this case he had made an exception, it was solely because this entire bundle of missives came from one specific person.

It must have been a few days after Francis replied with a couple of sarcastic lines to the first poem of Julien’s dated after the holidays. Francis had expected nothing more than the usual sharp retort in the next edition of Le Progrès. And yet, Julien surprised him with a personal letter.

In the first paragraph came an acknowledgment of having read Francis’s latest column—jab included—along with some praise for how interesting the piece had been, and a request or two for advice on his own writing. He wanted to know, in complete seriousness, how he himself might improve.

This part caused no astonishment in Francis, since he already knew how open Julien could be to others’ opinions.

What truly broke him out of the preconceived framework his mind had created was what came next, in the following lines. From that point on, Julien set out to tell him about the whole compendium of adventures in Lyon that had kept him occupied over the past two weeks, since the last time the two of them had seen each other.

He not only told him about his day-to-day life, but also asked about Francis’s own experiences—inquiring how he was handling the return to routine or whether anything noteworthy had happened that he might wish to share.

All in all, they were very personal paragraphs, inviting an equal level of emotional openness and encouraging the recipient to reciprocate each kind remark with phrases equally chosen so that the conversation would not falter.