But still he lingers in that doorway. And in the seconds that follow, he is brief ly erased by my earliest image of him: in Bardou's rags, bristling with suspicion. And then the Vidocq of the present comes sliding back, a far gentler being, and his eyes, against all expectations, ripen into merriment. He throws back his massive head and roars with laughter.

"Thank God you're not as innocent as you look! "

And then he's gone.

CHAPTE R 5 1.

Postlude T wo days a f te r Vidocq leaves, I get a summons from the wife of Brigadier-General Beauseant. By now, I've become leery of invitations from society ladies, and I'm no more reassured when the lady in question, a dowager of two and sixty, complains at length about the condition of her hips. At the conclusion of which she wheels on me and, in a buzzing baritone, snarls: "Well? "

"Well what, Madame?"

"It was my hope, dear Doctor, that you might favor me with your

opinion on my rheumatism."

"Oh, yes . . ."

"What I mean is: Do you think you might fit me into your schedule?"

"Into my-"

"Please don't be coy, Doctor! The word is out. You effect the most remarkable cures in all of Paris."

Very carefully I set down my teacup.

"Forgive me, Madame, but who has told you this?"

"Why, the Duchesse d'Angouleme! Just the other night, she was singing your praises to anyone who would listen. . . ."

A week late r, an invitation to the Tuileries allows me to thank my benefactress in person-but the Duchess is in no mood. She wants only to know if I've had news of Charles or the Baroness. She received word from them in Le Havre that they'd been delayed and would take the next ship to America. Since then, no word.

"I'm very sorry," I tell her. "I've heard nothing."

When we part, she says, in a confidential murmur: "We needn't worry, Doctor. God has gone to great lengths to bring Charles back to us. God will not abandon him a second time."

In the end, Charles and the Baroness fail to keep their appointment with the Lioncourts of the Hudson Valley, and the Duchess, starved for news, receives none. She never, in fact, hears from Charles again.

But her belief in him, this remains steadfast, which is why she declines to meet any of the other "lost dauphins" who come to press their claims on her. And there are dozens. One, a German clockmaker by the name of Karl Naundorff, goes so far as to sue her for recovery of personal property. For his temerity, he is deported to England.

In 1824 comes the long-awaited death of gout-ridden old Louis the Eighteenth. The Comte d'Artois gets the crown he has long craved and, as Charles the Tenth, the chance to practice the absolutism he believes France needs. France disagrees. After six years, he is replaced by Louis-Philippe, a less objectionable cousin. Once more, the royal family is expelled; once more, the Duchess is obliged to leave her native land. This time for good.

Her wanderings take her from Edinburgh to Prague to Slovenia, but she is ever my most faithful correspondent. And if her letters rarely mention Charles, he is the figure that lurks behind every line-and, indeed, the wellspring of our intimacy, for what else do she and I have in common?

Other than my career. Within weeks of her public endorsement, I am besieged with inquiries from all over the Faubourg Saint-Germain. Women, exclusively: countesses and marquesses and ambassadors' wives and bankers' mothers, complaining of palpitations, insomnia, frigidity, avidity. Many of them believe they are dying; one is convinced she's a grouse. All of them have francs for the f linging, and before another year has passed, I have my own clinic in the Rue de Richelieu and a reputation as a man with rare (and, by some lights, indecent) powers of suggestion.

I'll let you in on a secret. Bring a certain kind of woman into a dark room, look her in the eye, and, where necessary, apply the simple physic of touch . . . you will find few ill humors that won't yield to that. And if this same woman should wish to cure you, who are you to say no?

After several years of this-and more than a few mistresses-I reach the conclusion that my specialty has wandered too far from the Hippocratic ideal. In a volte-face that startles even me, I dedicate myself to venereal disease. It's a specialty calculated to offend my previous constituency, and yet my very first patients are the noblewomen I used to treat for sluggish blood f low.

Soon, too, the men find their way to my door. Mariners, caulkers, deputy ministers, dukes . . . I make no distinctions, except that I charge according to capacity. One August morning, I am visited by a distinguished gentleman in a ruff led white silk shirt under a light summer jacket. He follows me into the consultation room, and when I ask him about his condition, he answers, in the most courtly of cadences: "Got the wrong stuff coming out the dick."

I look up. A large gray-blue eye is winking back at me. Vidocq. We haven't spoken in many years, but I've followed his progress

through the newspapers. I know, for instance, that he married JeanneVictoire-"held up his end," after all. Surely she would have held up hers, too, except that she died within four years. Mama Vidocq followed six weeks after, and according to scuttlebutt, the great policeman consoles himself now with the charms of a comely young cousin. That is, when he's not chasing actresses, artists' models, soubrettes . . . the wives of his own officers. . . .

He's stouter and grayer now, more polished in his manners, but every bit as easy with his body. As he spreads his half-naked frame across the examining table, conversation spills from him in a perfect cataract.

"Damn me, Hector, you've done well for yourself. Love the candelabra-porphyry, is it? With some malachite thrown in? Beautiful piece. The velvet hangings are a nice touch, too. Must have come from Lyon. Hey, are you married? No? Get on your knees and thank Christ. Here I am, one wife barely cold in the ground, and Fleuride-Albertine badgering me every day to take her to the Bureau of Registry. What's the point, I ask her? Ah well, there's a bright side to the clap after all. No one's going to drag you to the altar with a weeping cock. Not that it keeps me from doing the old heave-ho. Ha! I was born erect, it's the Lord's truth. . . ."

My proddings do nothing to stanch the words, but a new quality does steal into his voice: vulnerability, let's call it. I realize he's talking because he's nearly as uncomfortable as I am.

"What's that you're mixing?" he asks at last.

"Mercury and silver nitrate."

"Goes right up the old pee hole, does it?"

"Afraid so."

From his silence, I assume he's bracing for the syringe. Truth is,

he's already drifting back to our common time.

"Strange business, wasn't it, Hector?"

"Yes, it was."

"The part I really regret," he says, "is we'll never know what happened in that tower all those years ago. And it's too damned bad." One night in December, I come home to find an envelope addressed to me from the United States of America. It contains a brief news item from the City Gazette and Daily Advertiser of Charleston, South Carolina. My English is just adequate to making it out:

Baroness Preval, the celebrated Lecturess, has arrived in the City, and is giving an Exhibition of her wonderful powers. Having had the pleasure of witnessing her in person, I cannot but give to this extraordinarily elegant and gracious French Gentlewoman the due praise which true talents are entitled to. Her theme is "Sufferings of a Peeress Under the Reign of Terror, At the Hands of Atheistic Jacobites." Particularly thrilling is the dramatic reenactment of the attempted guillotining of the Baroness's son, who, in actuality, barely escaped the event with the loss of his right hand. That part in the tableau is played by the gentleman himself, who also contributes a delightful talk on orchid varieties in Europe vis-a-vis the Americas. I sincerely trust that the Baroness and her collaborator will meet the encouragement such individuals deserve.

-A Connoisseur I never show this to anyone-Vidocq, least of all-but I do take it out from time to time. Seeking clarity, I suppose, but finding only more muddle.

I ask myself: Has Charles simply attached himself to a new protector-squeezed himself into a new pair of shoes? Or is he really the Baroness's son? How, then, did he know all those intimate details of the royal family's imprisonment? The bells . . . the death's-head hawkmoth in the princess's shift . . . the letters bound in white ribbon . . . how could anyone but Louis-Charles have known these things?

So here I sit, a man of middle years, no closer to certainty-and forced, finally, to make my own. Vidocq said there's never any accounting for people's faith, but there is. We make what we long for. Jesus was the son of a carpenter until a group of believers, contemplating him long after the fact, decided he was more. So, too, Charles, under the pressure of our hopes, became the man we yearned for. He's that man now. However imperfectly we come to believe something, the belief is its own perfection.

Which is to say: Against all evidence to the contrary, I believe that Charles Rapskeller is Louis the Seventeenth.

And even as I assert that, I dance away again. Maybe I've reached an age where not knowing is actually richer than knowing.

Or as Vidocq said on my clinic table, watching that syringe advance on him: