It was not the first time I’d seen rat poison on sale here. Paris seemed to have a problem with rats. Someone I’d met for lunch recently had said she’d seen them running around the Métro platform when she was coming home once around midnight. I remembered a rat had made a dramatic appearance in one of Baudelaire’s little poems in prose. A rich boy had lost interest in his expensive toy because he’d seen a poor boy poking a rat in an improvised cage. I’m pretty sure that wasn’t an invention on Baudelaire’s part — lots of poor parents probably thought of giving their children (or at least, their sons) rats as pets. Hadn’t I had a pet mouse myself? The rich boy who’d seen the rat certainly was delighted at the idea of having the creature as a pet.
