However, the fairy wastes away when we come into contact with the actual person to whom her name corresponds, for the name then begins to reflect that person who contains nothing of the fairy; the fairy can reappear if we absent ourselves from the person, but if we stay in the person’s presence the fairy dies for ever and with her the name, as with the Lusignan family,1 which was fated to become extinct on the day when the fairy Mélusine should die. So the Name, beneath the successive retouchings which might eventually lead us to discover the original handsome portrait of an unknown woman we have never met, becomes no more than the mere photograph on an identity card to which we refer when we need to decide whether we know, whether or not we should acknowledge a person we encounter. But should a sensation from the distant past – like those musical instruments that record and preserve the sound and style of the various artists who played them2 –