THE MIDNIGHT CONFESSIONS
La Rose de Suie
Or the art of not dying together
Paris, July 2025. Aboard the Chansonnier.
Six members. Five voices brought together by Babyface. In Paris, the Miliciens; among themselves, La Rose de Suie.
Read the complete interviewThe coterie
Paris, July 2025. Aboard the Chansonnier.
In Paris, they are known as the Miliciens. A name that suggests discipline, authority and service to the Prince.
But among themselves, they use another name.
La Rose de Suie.
I find that name delightful. A rose, with all its suggestions of elegance, beauty and delicacy. And soot, the black dust left behind when something has burned.
Having met the people concerned, I wonder whether someone had a particularly well-developed sense of irony.
I had asked a few contacts to tell me about them. The answers had not been especially reassuring. People praised their skills, their ability to survive difficult situations and their services to the Court. They also mentioned their temperaments, their methods and a few incidents best left undescribed.
Nobody had used the word discipline.
Their leader, Cassandre Delacroix, could not attend our meeting. Her duties as Prévôt kept her elsewhere. I would therefore meet five members of La Rose de Suie, until I might have an opportunity to speak with her.
I had prepared a few questions about their history, their relationships and their view of eternity.
I did not yet know how difficult it would be to ask them.
The meeting had been arranged aboard the Chansonnier, their Parisian barge. The lounge was comfortable. The armchairs around the table would have suited a fairly respectable cultural programme.
The guests, considerably less so.
Rose Moreau welcomed me with cautious politeness. Flore Wendling immediately wanted to know how the conversation would be organised. Vittorio Cordero surveyed the equipment with a professional eye before choosing his seat. Raphaël Saint-Yves arrived impeccably dressed, greeted everyone and sat down with the expression of a man hoping he had made a good decision.
Bogdan, meanwhile, inspected my equipment.
“How long are you planning to record with all this shit?”
I explained how the recorder worked.
“Right. And if I say something really fucking stupid, can you cut it?”
“Of course.”
“Perfect. Leave plenty of room for editing.”
I had not even started recording.
“Our leader? The pot plant.”
Babyface Good evening, everyone. Thank you for having me. I would like to start with a fairly simple question: who are you?
Bogdan Five vampires. Your interview's off to a bad start.
Rose Bogdan, could you make an effort?
Bogdan What? She asks who we are. I answer. We're five vampires. Two women, three men. Wonderful people. Want our shoe sizes?
Raphaël I believe she was hoping for a slightly more elaborate introduction.
Bogdan Then she should have asked something else.
Babyface Very well. Let me rephrase. You belong to La Rose de Suie, a coterie of Miliciens serving the Court of Paris. You work together, hold certain responsibilities and answer to a shared authority. How does your group function?
Vittorio Our skills complement one another. Each of us contributes within our own field, although certain decisions must naturally be made collectively.
Babyface And who leads?
Rose Cassandre.
Bogdan The pot plant.
Rose closes her eyes.
Babyface I'm sorry?
Bogdan Cassandre. Our Prévôt. A Toreador, always well dressed, very presentable, perfect for bowing and scraping at Court. You've got to admit she looks better in front of the Prince than my ugly mug.
Raphaël That last point would be difficult to dispute.
Bogdan Thanks, sweetheart. Love you too.
Babyface You seem unconvinced by your leader's qualities.
Bogdan I didn't say that. I'm saying she looks the part. And, strangely enough, in Paris, being a Toreador and looking the part opens a shitload of doors.
Flore You're being unfair, though.
Bogdan Why? Doesn't she look the part?
Flore That's not what I'm saying.
Bogdan Then we agree.
Rose You know perfectly well what she means.
Bogdan Obviously. But it's less funny.
Babyface Vittorio, do you share that opinion?
Vittorio Cassandre holds an official office. And that office carries responsibilities. We can discuss how she obtained it, but that does not change her function.
Babyface So you distinguish between the legitimacy of her appointment and the authority she exercises.
Vittorio Exactly. A title does not automatically make someone competent. However, disregarding a superior's authority simply because one doubts their qualities is an excellent way to create unnecessary problems.
Raphaël We already have enough of those without provoking disputes over precedence.
Babyface Rose?
Rose Cassandre is our leader. I don't always agree with her decisions, any more than with anyone else's. But someone has to take responsibility for certain things.
Bogdan There you go. A lovely pot plant with responsibilities. A rare species.
Rose Bogdan!
Bogdan What now?
Flore Sometimes I wonder whether you do it on purpose.
Bogdan Not sometimes, Flore. All the time.
He smiles behind his round glasses.
Babyface And if Cassandre gives you an order you consider bad?
Vittorio I explain the problems I have identified.
Rose So do I.
Raphaël I try to prevent her from making a mistake, where possible.
Flore We discuss it.
Bogdan I politely explain that she's talking shit.
Babyface Politely?
Bogdan With flowers, if you like. She's a Toreador.
Vittorio And once the decision has been made, one must know when to act.
Bogdan Of course. I'm a model Milicien. I complain before, during and afterwards. But I do the job.
Babyface So you do not challenge her authority.
Bogdan I challenge everything. That's different.
“Amateurism will kill us.”
Babyface What would you say is La Rose de Suie's greatest strength?
Vittorio The diversity of our skills.
Bogdan The fact we're still alive.
Raphaël Technically...
Bogdan Fuck, don't start.
Raphaël I merely wanted to point out that the term was open to debate.
Bogdan Yes, thank you, professor. We're still standing, if you prefer.
Flore I think we adapt. We encounter a problem, everyone contributes what they know, and we try to understand what's happening.
Rose The problem is that we don't always take enough time to think before acting.
Vittorio That is precisely what worries me. Amateurism will kill us.
Babyface Do you often feel you are working with amateurs?
Vittorio I chiefly think that we possess considerable abilities, but that does not excuse a lack of preparation. A good idea badly executed can be more dangerous than a bad idea one had the wisdom to abandon.
Bogdan You mean we should stop fucking things up?
Vittorio If you prefer that wording.
Bogdan Much shorter. And it sticks.
Rose First we'd have to be able to recognise a bad idea before trying it.
Raphaël I have attempted to propose that principle. It meets with remarkable resistance.
Flore You're all very critical, but we've also achieved quite a lot together.
Babyface That is something I would like to understand. How do you decide an idea is worth trying?
Bogdan Easy. If it explodes, it was a bad idea.
Rose Bogdan!
Bogdan Fine, all right. I'll try giving an intelligent answer for a change.
He stubs out his cigarette, then continues in a suddenly much calmer tone.
Bogdan A good idea isn't just something that might work. It's something where you know the consequences if it goes wrong. People always ask how to make their plan succeed. What I want to know is what we do when the plan stops working. Because that's usually when the shit starts.
Nobody interrupts him.
Babyface That is an interesting distinction.
Bogdan Obviously. I'm very intelligent. But don't spread it around; it'll ruin my reputation.
Vittorio For once, we agree entirely.
Raphaël What a pity it does not happen more often.
Flore See! We can talk normally!
Bogdan Easy, Flore. Don't spoil this historic moment.
“You could also try not killing people.”
Babyface It seems you sometimes have very different ideas about how to solve a problem.
Rose That's an understatement.
Babyface Suppose you apprehend someone who has important information. He refuses to talk. What do you do?
Bogdan I ask him politely.
Raphaël How surprising.
Bogdan I can be very polite. “Good evening, sir, would you mind telling us what you know before the evening becomes particularly unpleasant?”
Rose Or we try talking to him without starting with threats.
Bogdan But I just said good evening!
Flore First we need to understand why he won't talk. He might be afraid. He might be paid, threatened, or simply know nothing.
Vittorio That is the first thing to establish. Threatening someone who does not possess the information we seek serves no purpose.
Babyface So you all agree on favouring discussion?
Raphaël I fear you are being excessively optimistic.
Bogdan I've got a simple method. We talk, we talk, and once we're done talking, if the guy still thinks we're fucking idiots...
Rose No.
Bogdan I haven't said anything!
Rose You were about to.
Bogdan This is fucking extraordinary. Now she tells me off before I finish my sentences.
Rose Because I know you.
Bogdan There. See? That's the real problem with La Rose de Suie. No freedom of speech any more.
Flore You could also try not killing people.
Bogdan You know what? You're both a pain in the arse.
Vittorio It would also depend on the political consequences of his disappearance. An isolated man is not necessarily without connections. Removing him might attract more attention than letting him go.
Babyface So you rule out execution for practical reasons.
Vittorio I rule it out when it is a bad decision. I do not claim it is always unjustifiable.
Rose That's exactly where we struggle to agree.
Raphaël Perhaps we should begin by establishing who our enemy actually is before debating how to get rid of him.
Bogdan Exactly. Besides, if the guy's innocent, that's messy.
Rose It's not just a question of being messy!
Bogdan I know, Rose. I know.
His tone has changed just enough for her to notice. He does not try to keep the joke going.
I gradually understand that their disagreements are not simply clashes of temperament. Some of them regard violence as an available solution. Others see it as a failure to be avoided. And each seems to have a fairly firm opinion on the point at which one becomes the other.
“We don't remember five months. That complicates things.”
Babyface I would now like to approach a slightly more delicate subject. You have all recently experienced a rather troubling period.
Raphaël What a remarkably cautious way of putting it.
Babyface Five months of which you do not retain the memories you would expect. How can you keep working together when part of your shared history has disappeared?
Flore It's complicated, obviously. But we can also look at what exists today. There are still relationships, habits, people who know us.
Bogdan And fucking holes in our heads.
Babyface Does that worry you?
Bogdan No, no. It's fantastic. Five months of your life have fucked off, things have changed, people look at you as if they've known you for twenty years, and you're wondering whether you've already knocked their teeth out. A walk in the park.
Flore You could stop bringing everything back to violence.
Bogdan I could. But it helps me think.
Vittorio The real problem is that we must make decisions based on incomplete information. We may be missing agreements, commitments or knowledge that could alter our judgement.
Rose Not to mention the consequences of whatever we might have done.
Babyface Are you afraid of discovering unpleasant things about yourselves?
Rose I'm mainly afraid we'll draw conclusions before understanding what happened.
Bogdan I assume we probably fucked things up. It's statistically reasonable.
Raphaël So you have discovered statistics.
Bogdan Yes. In a book. With pictures. You should try it.
Babyface And you, Flore? You already know the difficulties an imperfect memory can cause.
Flore Exactly. We need to distinguish between what we remember, what we think we remember and what we infer. They're three different things.
Babyface And when those three things contradict one another?
Flore We investigate.
Bogdan Exactly. We investigate. And if someone did this to us, we might ask them very politely why.
Rose Bogdan...
Bogdan What? I said politely.
Vittorio It is also possible that we ourselves contributed to this situation. We cannot rule that out.
Babyface So you consider that you might be responsible for your own forgetting?
Vittorio I exclude no hypothesis sufficiently coherent to deserve examination.
Raphaël Which does not mean we intend to submit each of them to a journalist.
Babyface Noted.
Bogdan See, Babyface? That's our speciality. We don't know what the fuck we did, but we know perfectly well to keep our mouths shut.
Babyface Which is precisely what you cannot manage to do.
Bogdan That's my personal problem.
“If tomorrow you had to choose...”
Babyface Since you have come to know one another reasonably well, I would like to ask you something. Imagine that a member of La Rose de Suie is in danger and saving them would jeopardise an important mission. What do you do?
Vittorio We would need to know the circumstances.
Babyface Of course. But let us try not to write a treatise on strategy before answering.
Bogdan It's a fucking good question, though.
Rose We try to save the person.
Bogdan Even if it gets all of us killed?
Rose I didn't say we should walk stupidly into a trap.
Bogdan No, but what if that's the choice? One of us or everyone else?
Flore We try to find another solution.
Bogdan And if there isn't one?
Flore You really do love situations where everyone's doomed.
Bogdan Because it's easy to be generous when you can save everyone. I want to know what we do when we can't.
Raphaël In that case, I chiefly hope we will have taken precautions never to face that choice.
Vittorio A collective commitment does not automatically entitle us to sacrifice a team member. But refusing to consider the consequences of an operation is also dangerous.
Rose I'm not saying we shouldn't think. I'm saying we can't calmly decide, sitting around a table, that a companion is expendable.
Babyface Do you feel that is what Bogdan is suggesting?
Rose He always asks his questions in the most unbearable way possible.
Bogdan That's because I'm an arsehole. It's been medically established.
Flore I can confirm certain symptoms.
Bogdan Thank you, doctor.
Babyface But your question is serious.
Bogdan Of course it's serious.
He looks at each of the others in turn.
Bogdan If one of us ends up in deep shit, we'll all want to go and get them. Fine. But I'd also like us to consider the possibility that the best thing to do is not go straight away. Because if we all end up as ashes, that'll be a beautiful show of solidarity, but what fucking use will it be?
Rose Provided your reasoning doesn't become an excuse to abandon someone.
Bogdan And provided your principles don't become an excuse to get everyone killed.
Babyface That disagreement does not seem likely to disappear.
Vittorio It probably never will. We do not all define responsibility in the same way.
Raphaël And I suggest we avoid turning this interview into a practical exercise.
Nobody laughs immediately.
I understand that behind the jokes there is something more binding than mere cooperation. The Miliciens cannot always contemplate losing one of their own with the detachment they profess.
“Are any of you fit for company?”
Babyface Let us change the subject. A question that should be less dangerous. What do you appreciate about your companions?
Raphaël Are you certain it will be less dangerous?
Babyface I'll take the risk.
Flore I think they all have good qualities.
Bogdan Here we go. She's going to give us group therapy.
Flore Do you really want me to start with you?
Bogdan No, thanks. I'd like to keep my psychological problems. They cost me enough.
Babyface I'm listening, Flore.
Flore Rose has real integrity. She holds to her convictions and isn't easily diverted. Raphaël stays calm, even when he's annoyed. Vittorio can think and act without necessarily telling everyone what he's planning.
Vittorio Thank you.
Flore And Bogdan is very determined. Sometimes a little too much, but he doesn't let go of a lead easily.
Bogdan You can say I'm a genius. I don't mind.
Flore I wouldn't go that far.
Babyface Rose?
Rose They regularly get on my nerves.
Raphaël At least that is an honest answer.
Rose But I also know they can act when they need to. Vittorio's competent, Raphaël generally thinks before doing something stupid, Flore has knowledge we find very useful...
Bogdan And I'm beautiful.
Rose And you could learn to shut up for five minutes.
Bogdan Fuck, that's unfair. I'm the only one she wants to improve.
Babyface Vittorio?
Vittorio We sometimes exasperate one another. But each of them has a certain consistency. Their principles, however debatable, generally allow us to anticipate certain reactions.
Babyface A quality you consider essential.
Vittorio Unpredictability can kill an organisation.
Raphaël I suppose I must also take part in this distribution of compliments.
Babyface If you would be so kind.
Raphaël Rose has medical skills I hope never to need in an emergency. Flore is well read, although some of her questions ought to be submitted to a safety committee. Vittorio knows how to work. As for Bogdan...
Bogdan Go on, say you love me.
Raphaël He is remarkably effective when he stops behaving like an imbecile.
Bogdan Thank you, darling. I knew there was something between us.
Babyface Bogdan, what about you?
Bogdan They're a pain in the arse.
Rose Is that all?
Bogdan What? You're a pain in the arse. But you'd be even more of a pain if you were useless. So it's all right.
Flore That's almost adorable.
Bogdan Don't push me, Flore.
Babyface You seem to value them more than you want to acknowledge.
Bogdan Got to keep someone around to open doors for me.
Rose You're the one who always opens them.
Bogdan There you go. They can't even do that properly.
“You don't love one another. You're simply still here.”
Babyface I have one last question about your life together. Are you friends?
Raphaël No.
Bogdan Certainly not.
Flore Depends on what you call friends.
Rose Could you two make a little effort?
Vittorio Friendship rests, among other things, on trust and commitments honoured. It cannot be decreed.
Babyface You seem very reluctant to use that word.
Raphaël It is generally overused. One can appreciate someone's skills without entrusting them with one's secrets.
Bogdan Besides, honestly, I'm surrounded by a bunch of nutters. There's a Malkavian who always finds one more question to ask, a Gangrel who wants to save every arsehole in Paris, a mobster who gives me business management lectures and a dandy who'd happily spend half his unlife in front of his wardrobe.
Raphaël You forgot the Nosferatu incapable of remaining silent for more than thirty seconds.
Bogdan He's the best one.
Flore I'm not mad, Bogdan.
Bogdan Didn't say mad. Said nutter. Much more affectionate.
Flore That isn't particularly reassuring.
Babyface So you spend a lot of time insulting one another.
Rose Mostly him.
Raphaël It accounts for a significant part of our soundscape.
Vittorio We do, however, know how to work together.
Babyface But working together and liking one another are two different things.
Vittorio Exactly.
Babyface Yet you are all still here.
Bogdan Because you haven't finished your interview.
Babyface I meant that you continue to form a coterie.
Bogdan Just because we argue doesn't mean we all have to fuck off our separate ways.
The answer came too quickly to be a prepared joke.
Babyface That almost sounds like an expression of attachment.
Bogdan Fuck, don't you start as well.
An evening without obligations
Babyface To stop you verbally murdering one another, let me suggest something lighter. You have an entire night without danger, without a mission, without obligations. What do you do?
Rose I'd probably go and work at the hospital.
Flore I'd work too!
Raphaël Please. Tell me this is a joke.
Flore No. I like seeing my patients. And then I might read in a café, go dancing or see a film.
Rose A walk would do me good.
Babyface Vittorio?
Vittorio I would spend time with my soldati.
Raphaël Fascinating. Three people are granted absolute freedom and immediately choose to go back to work.
Vittorio I do not regard the company of my men as an obligation.
Babyface And you?
Raphaël At home. In peace. Away from all this.
Rose You realise you're going to hurt our feelings?
Raphaël A risk I accept.
Babyface Bogdan?
Bogdan I climb the Eiffel Tower.
Flore To look at Paris?
Bogdan Yes. The night, the lights, the little cars, all those people running around. And I piss on the ones below.
Rose Bogdan!
Bogdan What? I'm joking!
Babyface At least, I hope so.
Bogdan No, seriously, I like looking down on a city. You see the movements, the habits, the areas where things happen and the ones where they don't. It's interesting.
Flore There! You could have started with that.
Bogdan Yes, but it was less funny.
Babyface And if all five of you had to spend that evening together?
Raphaël That immediately contradicts the premise of a night without obligations.
Rose We could go somewhere.
Flore See a show?
Vittorio Depends on the show.
Bogdan A dance party at the Tremere's. With an all-you-can-eat buffet and a diablerie contest.
Rose Will you shut up?
Bogdan All right, all right. We'll go to the Tremere's without a buffet.
I conclude that their collective leisure activities have yet to be invented.
The problem of the last night
The evening has lasted much longer than planned. I have abandoned some of my questions. Some would probably have triggered endless discussions; others would have led my guests to reveal things they would afterwards prefer to see disappear from the recording.
I still have one question to ask them.
Babyface Suppose you learned tomorrow that this night would be La Rose de Suie's last. Not necessarily your Final Death. Simply the end of your coterie. You would no longer work together.
What would you miss?
Raphaël The silence.
Rose Raphaël!
Raphaël Forgive me. You are right; it is an excellent question.
Flore You're doing it again!
Raphaël I have no idea what you mean.
Vittorio The complementary nature of our resources. We have learned to solve problems together. Building a comparable team would take time.
Babyface Very professional.
Vittorio We are discussing the end of a working relationship.
Flore I think I'd be curious to know what happened to them. I don't think you can go through certain things together and then act as though those people never existed.
Rose I'd keep in touch.
Bogdan How horrifying.
Rose With you too.
Bogdan I'll change my number.
Babyface So you are certain Rose would try to reach you?
Bogdan She'd be quite capable of coming to check if I'm all right. Imagine the humiliation.
Rose It would be such a shame to leave you wasting away on your own.
Bogdan I waste away with great dignity, madam.
Babyface And you, Raphaël? Would you never ask after the others?
Raphaël I would chiefly appreciate their no longer being able to cause catastrophes in which I was obliged to participate.
Flore That's not an answer.
Raphaël It is an excellent one.
Babyface If Rose called you in the middle of the night to ask for help?
Raphaël I would ask what she had done this time.
Rose Thank you.
Babyface And would you go?
Raphaël It would depend on the situation.
Flore But you'd answer the phone.
Raphaël Flore...
Flore I'm simply pointing out that you'd answer.
Bogdan Fuck, she's got you there.
Raphaël I am beginning to regret coming.
Babyface Bogdan, I have not asked you what you would miss.
Bogdan Nothing.
Babyface Absolutely nothing?
Bogdan No.
He takes a drag on his cigarette.
Bogdan Well, yes, actually. I'd have to find four other idiots who already know my bad habits and are competent enough not to get killed the first time we fuck something up. That's a lot of work for not much.
Babyface So you do have a certain preference for these four.
Bogdan Mainly I can't be arsed to start again.
Vittorio A motivation I understand perfectly.
Rose You're hopeless.
Bogdan But effective.
Rose seems to search for an answer, then finally smiles despite herself.
Babyface One last thing. If I asked you to define La Rose de Suie in a single sentence, what would you say?
Raphaël A casting error that has lasted far too long.
Vittorio A functional association despite sometimes incompatible methods.
Flore Very different people trying to understand how to move forward together.
Rose A team that should learn to listen to one another better.
Bogdan A fine bunch of arseholes. But they're ours.
This time, nobody corrects him.
And I think that is the answer I was waiting for.
Babyface's perspective
I do not know exactly what I imagined when I agreed to meet La Rose de Suie. A disciplined team, probably. A few competent vampires, perhaps a little arrogant, who would discuss their missions with the restraint expected of the Prince's servants.
I discovered something else.
Five personalities that constantly collide, five ways of understanding power, violence, responsibility and human relationships. Individuals who spend much of their conversation challenging one another's ideas, yet also seem to know one another's qualities quite precisely.
Above all, I understood that it would be dangerous to confuse their behaviour with their abilities.
Bogdan is the most obvious example.
He speaks loudly, swears constantly, provokes his companions and takes obvious pleasure in playing the fool. His humour can be frankly questionable, and he seems to believe every conversation deserves at least one inappropriate remark.
Yet it would be a mistake to think him stupid.
One need only ask him a question whose consequences might become serious to see a different man emerge. A mind attentive to detail, unfavourable scenarios and risks the others sometimes prefer not to consider.
He has simply understood that it is often easier to pass for an idiot than to let one's interlocutors gauge exactly what one knows.
Vittorio is almost his opposite in the way he presents himself.
Where Bogdan deliberately obscures his image, Vittorio maintains that of a professional. He does not particularly seek to be likeable. He wants his competence recognised and considers amateurism a dangerous failing.
But I noticed that the two men often found common ground when analysing the risks of a decision.
They do not use the same words. Bogdan readily talks about shit and catastrophes. Vittorio prefers commitments and operational consequences.
Yet their concerns are not always as far apart as they would like to believe.
Rose, for her part, occupies a delicate position.
She refuses to regard violence as a mere technique and seems to feel an almost physical need to remind her companions that their decisions concern living beings. She possesses a patience that Bogdan clearly makes a point of exhausting.
At first, I thought she was simply the group's moral conscience.
That would be far too reductive.
Rose can be tough. She does not hesitate to contradict her companions and is not easily intimidated. Her compassion is not a form of passivity. She sets limits and seems perfectly willing to defend them.
Flore may have surprised me most.
I expected a somewhat distracted Malkavian, curious by nature and passionate about occult subjects. I met a woman who genuinely listens to others and can sometimes bring a discussion back to its real question.
She does not always try to impose her opinion. She offers a hypothesis, asks a question, watches a reaction.
And sometimes that approach proves far more effective than grand declarations of authority.
I think some of her companions underestimate her.
Or at least do not always grasp the implications of what she has just said until it is too late.
Raphaël is a case apart.
He displays impeccable courtesy, takes care over his appearance and wields sarcasm with a precision that sometimes borders on cruelty. He seems sincerely weary of his coterie's complications, while continuing to take part in their discussions.
I am not convinced he enjoys solitude quite as much as he claims.
Or rather, I believe he enjoys being able to choose who deserves to disturb his peace.
And, clearly, the Miliciens have earned that privilege, even if he would probably prefer to die rather than admit it in front of them.
There remains one absent member about whom I would not wish to draw hasty conclusions.
Cassandre Delacroix.
I had no opportunity to question her tonight, but her name came up in several conversations. Her companions acknowledge her authority while expressing rather contrasting opinions of her qualities.
Some seem to believe that her membership of clan Toreador and her ability to represent the coterie properly before the Court largely explain her position.
Perhaps.
But I know Parisian society well enough to understand that an office can be an honour, a favour and a formidable responsibility all at once.
I will therefore refrain from judging the Prévôt by the jokes of those she leads.
Especially since a leader's absence from a conversation is an excellent opportunity to discover what their subordinates really think of them.
And sometimes to learn more about the subordinates than about the leader.
What chiefly interests me about La Rose de Suie is what happens when its members stop joking.
They are capable of profound disagreements. Rose will never be entirely satisfied with Bogdan's reasoning. Vittorio will probably continue to demand a rigour not all his companions share. Flore will keep asking questions at the wrong moment, and Raphaël will discover a new reason every night to wish he had stayed at home.
Yet when the loss of a group member is considered, the tone changes.
They still try to rationalise their answers. To speak of skills, interests, safety, commitments.
But behind those words something harder to define can be sensed.
They have acquired habits. They know whom to ask for certain things. They recognise their companions' voices, reactions and silences. They even seem to have developed that particular form of tolerance which consists of enduring in another person faults one would find unbearable in a stranger.
I do not know whether that is friendship.
They themselves do not seem to agree on the question.
I only know that they keep meeting, talking, arguing and facing together problems they would probably rather avoid.
In Kindred society, there are more prestigious alliances, older loyalties and more solemn oaths.
I do not know how many would survive a comparable evening.
One last thing comes back to me.
When I asked Bogdan what he would miss if the coterie broke up, he claimed he would miss nothing. Then he acknowledged that it would be particularly tiresome to find four people competent enough to tolerate his habits.
It was a crude answer, of course.
He gives plenty of those.
But I think it had the virtue of sincerity.
La Rose de Suie is not an ideal family. I am not even certain its members would accept that term.
They know one another too well to sustain grand illusions about each other's qualities for long.
Yet they stay together.
It may not be as noble as an eternal oath.
In Paris, I find it far more interesting.
Finally, I think again of their name.
A rose and soot.
A flower one might think fragile, paired with what remains after the flames. I do not know who chose it, or exactly what they meant by it. Names sometimes have a history that even their owners no longer entirely know.
But this one suits them strangely well.
They live amid the ashes of their old certainties, bear the traces of nights they no longer remember and nevertheless continue to defend what they believe to be their place in the world.
I now intend to meet them separately.
That will give me an opportunity to ask certain questions none of them would probably have agreed to discuss in front of their companions.
And to see whether the faces they present together really resemble the ones they wear in private.
For once, I believe I can predict one thing with certainty.
Bogdan is going to swear a great deal.
Babyface
The Midnight Confessions, Paris la Nuit.
To follow: five individual interviews, five stories and a few answers that will probably be easier to obtain out of La Rose de Suie's earshot.