the Switzerland/Québec allegory: secession now imminent — betraying the cause at the hour of victory

The allegory's present-tense stake, dropped almost in passing: "now that victory and independence of the neighbors is possible I am betraying it." The A.F.R.'s strategy (145's testicular frappe) is close enough to working that secession is at hand — and it is precisely at this hour that Marathe sells the cause out for Gertraude's care (153's price list). The political tragedy the fable frames is one of timing: the traitor defects exactly when the nation he betrays is about to win, so that his private love and his people's freedom come due in the same moment. (The choosing-philosophy — love as the chains one chooses — is entertainment-self's / irony-sincerity's; landed here is the secession-imminence.)