having earlier extracted from Françoise, the bloodthirsty pacifist, a promise not to inflict too much pain on the rabbit she had had to kill and wishing to know how it had met its death. Françoise assured me that everything had gone off perfectly, very quickly: ‘I never seen any animal like that. It just died without as much as saying a word. Maybe it was dumb …’ Unversed in the speech-habits of animals, I suggested that perhaps rabbits do not screech quite like chickens. ‘Oh, what a thing to say! Françoise gasped in indignation at such ignorance. As if a rabbit wouldn’t screech as loud as a
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