Editing Under the Volcano (section)

===Chapter 1===
In the first chapter, set on 2 November 1939, Jacques Laruelle and Dr. Vigil drink [[anisette]] at the [[Hotel Casino de la Selva]], on a hill above Quauhnahuac (an approximation of the Nahuatl name of [[Cuernavaca]]), and reminisce on the Consul's presence, exactly a year ago. His alcoholism is discussed and his unhappy marriage; that his wife came back to him is remarked upon as particularly striking. Their conversation over (they are to meet later again that night at a party), Laruelle walks down from the hotel into town through the ruins of a palace of [[Maximilian of Mexico|Archduke Maximilian]]. Along the way he remembers spending a season with the Consul: Laruelle's family and the Consul's adopted family (the Taskersons, consisting of a poetic-minded patriarch and a set of hard-drinking sons) rented adjoining summer homes on the English Channel. Afterward Laruelle spent some time with the Taskersons in England but the friendship soon petered out.

Laruelle is scheduled to leave Quauhnahuac the next day, but has not yet packed and does not want to go home, spending his time instead at the Cervecería XX, a bar connected to the local cinema, run by Sr. Bustamente. At that bar, he is given a book he had borrowed a year and a half before from the Consul—an anthology of Elizabethan plays he had meant to use for a film on the Faustus myth. Playing a variation on [[Sortes virgilianae]], his eyes fall on the closing words of the chorus in [[Christopher Marlowe|Marlowe]]'s ''[[Doctor Faustus (play)|Doctor Faustus]]'', "Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight...", then finds a desperate letter by the Consul to Yvonne, a final plea for her to return, interspersed with descriptions of alcoholic stupor and delirium tremens. Laruelle burns the letter. A bell outside sounds ''dolente, delor'' symbolising the closing of the chapter.