Marcel lived in the British Museum, with his father, Maxime Souris; his mother, Martine Souris; and his latest batch of siblings: Marius, Madeleine, Melisande, Modeste, and Micheline. They inhabited a fine old dovecot, which had been ripped from its moorings by a ravening crowd of revolutionaries and was only saved from burning by the appearance of someone who needed to be hung. It sat in the field, and then in a blacksmith’s back shed, until at last it became History and bobbed from museum to museum. It was rather ungainly, and its historical place was so minor that each museum soon tired of it and its musty, rural smell; but the British Museum had a large empty spot in a room of pastoral artefacts, and there it settled.

According to Maxime Souris, his family had made the entire trek with this dovecot; his arrière arrière grandpère had crawled into the fallen dovecot, rebelliously staking his claim to the former palace of the lordly doves, and there he had raised a family of revolutionary fieldmice, which spread across France and Britain as the vast birdhouse made its rounds.

“Six squads of Souris have I loosed upon Britain!” cried Maxime, “and my father before me, fifteen! Zese foul conservative bière-drinkers will be sorry zey opposed zee revolution!”

Martine, who was born Mary Chestnut and was quite an ordinary British churchmouse until she ascended to the storied house of Souris, just smiled indulgently and picked up some strong pieces of straw with which to patch the side of the baby nest. Marius had been a rather athletic mouseling.

Marcel, on the other hand, was not particularly vigorous. He liked to help his mother around the dovecot, and found his father’s lectures on insurrection and political agitation rather distressingly sanguine. When Maxime led raiding parties to the museum café, Marcel was always discovered to have an upset stomach, or to have vertigo at the idea of dropping from the dove-holes to the ‘Symbol of the Rapacious Aristocracy’ placard below. When his littermates saluted their parents and dropped silently into the outside world, Marcel burrowed under the straw at the back of the dovecot and hid. When the litter after him swore their allegiance to the cause of revolution and disappeared into the marble fastness, he climbed up into the cupola of the ornate birdhouse and waited for them to be gone. When Micheline, Melisande, Madeleine, Modeste, and Marius assembled in ranks to carry the word of Souris to the waiting rodentia of London, Maxime put his foot down.

“Marcel, I do not believe you are sick. I do not believe you are afraid of hauteur, of heights. I am of zee opinion zat you are afraid tout simplement!”

The girls looked grave, Martine looked away, Modeste studied a tract written on a cookie fortune, and Marius made a face at his older brother over Maxime’s shoulder.

“Weeeeell?” said Maxime, “Will you not defend your honneur, my boy? Zee reputation of your glorious famille?”

“No, sir,” shuffled Marcel. “You are quite right. I’m afraid to live outside the dovecot. It is so warm and comfortable here, and so cold and dark out there!”

Maxime’s eyes bulged, each seeming larger than his skinny claws. “OUT! You will be OUT of my house, you ingrate! Running dog royaliste! Counterrevolutionary! Mirabeau! You shame the name of Souris! Zee spark français is not in you! You are not a Souris! You are just a Mouse!”

And with that, he marched Marcel to the nearest dove-hole, grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and the base of the tail, and pitched him out into the echoing blackness of the British Museum, for the first time out of the sweet smell of straw, air rushing cold and blue around him, alone and frightened and small.