the youngest sister of Marguerite and Véronique. After having suffered the rejection of her family and the mockery of her classmates, she kindles the love of two very close friends, Fleurissoire and Blafaphas. Almost by chance, she chooses Amédée, who, in turn, promises his friend never to exercise his conjugal rights.

Protos

Protos, also known as Defouqueblize (deh-fohk-BLEEZ), a former schoolmate of Lafcadio. He is a mysterious, fascinating, and highly resourceful character who revels in disguising himself and assuming various identities so as better to manipulate his victims. He is the mastermind of a vast swindle undertaken by a secret society, the “Mille-Pattes,” which collects funds to deliver the real pope, allegedly imprisoned in the cellars of the Vatican. His recourse to histrionic effects is counterbalanced by the excessive credulity of his dupes. At the end, he is arrested, not because of his swindle but for Lafcadio’s gratuitous crime, after Carola’s denunciation.

Carola Venitequa

Carola Venitequa (veh-nee-tay-KAH), a prostitute with a big heart whose very name suggests sexual availability. Protos’ former mistress, she lives with Lafcadio for a while, returns to Protos, initiates Amédée to the pleasures of love, and is subjected to Julius’ clumsy advances. At the end, she denounces Protos to the police, believing that he was responsible for Amédée’s murder, and ends up being strangled by him.

Most of the characters in this ironic novel of deception and betrayal are either simpletons or sophisticates. Chief among the first group are the “wise fools,” Amedee Fleurissoire and his friend Gaston Blafaphas. Because of their innocence, they are easy victims of knavery. Nevertheless, they are “wise,” for their simple piety protects them from cynicism in a world of ambiguous moral choice.

Similarly, most of the sheltered women in Lafcadio’s Adventures are innocent to the point of simplicity: Veronica Armand-Dubois, Marguerite de Baraglioul (and her daughter Genevieve), and Arnica Fleurissoire. All are conventionally religious, unimaginative, and complaisant in the round of their domestic obligations. They are also notably lacking in sexual passion, with the possible exception of Genevieve, who is romantic yet untried. More sexually experienced, though also inherently simple in spirit, is Carola Venitequa, who sacrifices herself in defense of her unlikely hero, Amedee. Also included, with some qualifications, among the wise fools is Anthime Armand-Dubois. A fanatic, whether of science or of religion, he is a true believer in absolutes. He sways back and forth between extreme intellectual positions, mistaking absolute reality for the temporary resiliency of his bones and joints. He muddles through life, never fully comprehending a reality apart from his own prejudices and superstitions.

At the opposite pole are the sophisticates, among them, Julius de Baraglioul, a novelist with a shrewd sense of human psychology who nevertheless cannot understand reality when he confronts it; Lafcadio Wluiki, the truly “free” man of the novel, capable of nearly every excess but also a victim of his own calculation; and finally, Protos, a confidence man utterly unscrupulous when he thinks logically but also careless in his passion. These sophisticates are thus “foolish” despite (or because of) their cunning. Masters of expediency, they are betrayed by inner weaknesses: Julius by vanity, Lafcadio by self-confidence, Protos by cruelty. In the end, the test of reality exposes their weaknesses: Julius, who steals Lafcadio’s concept of the “gratuitous crime” for the purposes of his fiction, fails to recognize in his half brother the actual criminal; Lafcadio, who has imagined himself to be superior to other men because of his disinterested isolation, finally recognizes that he is the least of men, a murderer; finally, Protos, who has always defined people as being of two types, the “slim” (the tricksters who carry no moral baggage) and the “crusted” (the tricked), ends up in the hands of the police, charged with a murder—that of Amedee—he observed but did not commit.