Antoine feels the urge to get up and embrace him, but he holds back because at school they taught him the norms of social behavior, one of which was not to hug strangers in the street at night. He can’t recall if, in that book of good manners, an exception was made for lamplighters. He just can’t understand a planet on which no one finds two strangers fighting in the street odd, but many are scandalised if they see two strangers embracing.