"Pick your messiah," says Vidocq, shrugging. "There's never any accounting for people's faith. Is there, Hector?"

CHAPTE R 4 7.

In Which the Nature of Hector's Research Is Revealed Th e one cons picuous absence at the Marquis's funeral is the Duchesse d'Angouleme. Word circulates among mourners that she is ill, but at the precise moment of her old friend's interment, she is actually sitting in a bedroom in the Rue de l'Hirondelle, tearing up Mother Vidocq's linen sheets for the purpose of making bandages.

Before her lies the man she calls brother. No longer plumped on pillows. Flat and still and pale.

"Has he awakened since last night?" she asks.

"No," I say. "But his pulse is steady, and his breathing is free. At present, we can only keep dressing the wound and making him as comfortable as we can."

She nods and carries on with the rending of sheets. Surprising strength in those white veiny fingers.

"If you have any pressing obligations, Madame, I should be glad to send word when his condition changes."

"Actually, I should prefer to stay. If you don't mind."

She stays the whole day. And nothing about Charles' wound or the dressing of it stirs the slightest revulsion in her. So quietly and methodically does she go about her work that I find myself more than once thinking she's missed her true vocation.

And then I recall that this was her objective all those months in the Temple: to nurse her brother. And now, at last, someone is letting her.

She has never once asked for a court physician.

At fou r in the afternoon, Mother Vidocq arrives with a tray nearly as large as her.

"Here, Madame la Duchesse. I've brought you biscuits and a lovely pot of chrysanthemum tea. Just the thing to keep your strength up. Here's some water for our patient to sip when he wakes up. And for the doctor, a nice glass of cassis. Drink up, my dears. I've also brought more sheets. Tear them to shreds for all I care, a body doesn't need more than one at a time. . . ."

A few minutes later, Jeanne-Victoire wanders in, coolly nodding her respects.

"You ought to open his shirt," she says. "He'll breathe better."

Having so advised me, she leaves. Mindful, though, of the woman in black silk, she pauses in the doorway and abruptly drops into a curtsey.

It's not her awkwardness that makes me smile. It's the conf luence: a duchess and a baker's wife and a thief 's mistress gathering in the same room to tend to a lost king. You don't find that every day in Paris.

The next morning, the first signs of suppuration appear through the crust of Charles' wound. I do everything that comes to mind. Chlorinated lotions, nitrate of silver. Bleeding, leeches. The infection continues to spread.

Several days later, the Duchess, removing her brother's dressing, is sent reeling by the odor from his wound. Reaching for a handkerchief, she gazes down at freshly blackened skin, oozing humors.

"Gangrene," she says.

For half a second, I think of lying, but then she looks me in the eye and says:

"What do you propose to do?"

I don't know if I can convey it, the tone of her voice. No outrage, no altitude. She genuinely wants to know, and she thinks I'm the man to tell her. I don't even pause to ask what Father would have done.

"In my opinion, we should remove another length of bone."

"Another . . ."

She glances back to see if the patient has heard.

"The necrosis has spread too far," I explain. "By removing another two inches or so, I believe we can cut away the festering tissue and, with luck, save the rest of his arm."

"A nd him?" She holds my gaze. "Will you save him?"

"I think we can raise his chances to-roughly even."

She draws in a long breath and then, as she studies Charles' form thrashing beneath the blankets, expels the breath.

"As you wish," she says.

We operate that very afternoon. Jeanne-Victoire braces Charles' legs. Vidocq grips the torso, and his mother holds the lantern. The Duchess volunteers, against all attempts to dissuade her, to hold the tenaculum artery forceps.

I've dosed Charles liberally with laudanum, but once the bow saw gets to work and the dead f lesh gives way to living bone, the drug's effects soon evaporate. His body begins to buck. Blood gorges his throat, his jaw drops open to reveal the full extent of his soft palate, and screams emerge in an unbroken sequence.

"Hector," mutters Vidocq, sweating from the effort of restraining him. "Will you hurry up?"

This time, at least, we dispense with the tar. A tourniquet slows the bleeding enough to allow ligatures to be applied, and Charles, with the help of another dose of laudanum, eventually falls into a vexed sleep.