Jean-Paul lived in the cupboard beside the tea set.

He was always near the bottom of the stack, and he preferred it that way, because it meant he never had to get up to let anyone else out. The other dishes did not see it that way, and fancied that his low position in society permitted them to look down on him, and they did. But Jean-Paul didn't mind. He was fine with the way things were.

It was the others who were unhappy. Oh, how Old Jaques complained about the way his poor old bones would weary from the effort of rolling across the dining room. Louise would say that they hadn't any bones, as they were the fine porcelain the Master only used to impress important guests, and not any common lowly bone china, like the bourgeois trash that was always making a ruckus in the larder. Poor unhappy Claudette would pledge her agreement, and poor unhappy Louise would think that this was proof that she spoke the truth.

To be fair, Louise had more than enough reason to be unhappy, least of all being that she was very lovely. Oh, it was a terrible thing to be beautiful, Louise was always saying. How terrible it was that her surface shown the brightest in candlelight, her color was the softest and most vivid, and the gentle chime she made when you struck her with a fork was clearest music, because it made everyone else terribly jealous.

"Count yourself lucky, dear Claudette, that you are so homely."

Claudette would sigh and say, "Poor dear Louise, you are far too generous."

Young Jaques would then say, "Yes, yes, far too generous," and would imagine that if he said it a certain number of innumerable times, Louise would eventually fall hopelessly in love with him. For some reason that Jean-Paul could not quite guess, Young Jaques loved Louise, and indeed, his love was quite hopeless. Though to be fair, it was at least a simple thing to understand. It would have been very hard not to be in love with Louise, in fact, had she not been so determinedly unpleasant.

All the while, Frederique would lie on the very bottom of the shelf beneath Jean-Paul, seldom saying a word or even leaving the cupboard. Jean-Paul liked Frederique. He liked that she was very easy to ignore, which is what he did, most of the time, and that sometimes, when the others were sleeping and Jean-Paul was pretending to sleep, she would sing, softly, perhaps to herself, and the songs were always beautiful and unhappy, even more beautiful and unhappy than Louise could ever hope to be.