"Real. The first time it came outside Clara tried to tell us it was his son, born funny, but none of us was that stupid. And it was a girl," he adds, weaving around a small crowd gathered for a young woman playing a mandolino. "Her name was Rose-Marie and he'd won her gambling. When he couldn't walk down the stairs alone anymore people would give the monkey things to carry back up to him in the window. She outlived him. I heard his sister took her to live with her in Val Foret after he died."

She might still be there, grey around the mouth and searching for bugs in children's hair, but he doesn't know enough about monkeys' lifespans to hope.