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Pistou refused the outing at once.
He had followed her as far as the gangplank, looked toward the canal where the noise had already thickened into a wall of voices, and sat down with his back feet neatly under him in the position that meant no. Elodie had respected the decision. He was now on the stern deck of Le Livre Vagabond in a patch of sun, supervising harbor life from a distance that suited his standards.
“You are wiser than I am,” she had told him.
He had not disputed it.
The canal looked sharper under full sun than it had under the previous evening’s parade light. The colors were harder. The white of the jousters’ outfits struck the eye more cleanly. The painted boats — red and blue, polished and maintained for this very kind of scrutiny — cut bright tracks through the water. The bunting strung between buildings did not soften anything. If anything, it intensified the practical drama of the place, reminding the eye at every turn that beauty and municipal overconfidence often shared infrastructure.