People have on good black clothes, and they take off their hats and look at the coffin, and behave serious and reverent, and nobody dares to make a bad joke, the way they do in ordinary life. It’s good for people to be serious, once in a way. I’ve sometimes asked myself if I ought not to have become a clergyman⁠—in a certain way it wouldn’t have suited me so badly.⁠—I hope I didn’t make any mistake in my French?”

“No,” Joachim answered, “ ‘ Je le regrette beaucoup ’ was perfectly right as far as it went.”