A plunge into the Carnaval des Gueux in Montpellier. The book is threaded with verses of the poet Jehan Rictus, in the slang of the Paris streets, in which the speaker wanders kilometres of asphalt on evenings of horror and bitterness, hoping to bump into the woman who waits for him — perhaps Beauty, perhaps Charity — and keeps dreaming because dreams cost nothing. Opening line: “A laugh will bury them all / Let this world die.”