"Here I am," she says.

"I am sorry for your trials, Baroness."

"You needn't be, Doctor. Many have endured far worse. And there is something to be said, after all these years, for simply being alive. At any rate, you cannot have come here to lavish pity on an old fossil like me."

"I still don't know why I've come, Madame."

Keeping her left foot still, she executes a slow pivot with the right- training her eyes in every direction.

"A week ago Wednesday," she says, "Leblanc came to me in a most agitated condition. He told me he had come into possession of a particular object, and in order to authenticate it, he required someone- shall we say someone of a certain estate. However fallen."

"What was this object?"

Whether she hears me or not, I can't say, for she quickly tacks on.

"Having satisfied himself that the object in question was authentic, Leblanc told me he required someone else to make a further identification. Toward that end, he set about locating a Dr. Carpentier in the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Genevieve."

"He never reached me."

Her slippered foot sketches a circle round a shorn-off robin's wing.

"I thought as much," she says.

She looks at me now, her blue and brown eyes gleaming with their opposed intelligences.

"Doctor, I am by no means an exemplary woman. I have wished evil on many people in life, but I would gladly call up every last f lame of hell if I could be certain that Leblanc's killers were on the pyre."

"May I ask, Madame, how you learned of Monsieur Leblanc's death ? "

She looks at me a while longer. Gives her lower lip a soft bite.

"Leblanc had a habit of visiting me every Monday morning, precisely at ten. He was regular as the dew that way. Monday last, he failed to show. Indeed, he sent no word of any kind. It was most unlike him. Having failed to find him at his lodgings, I did what any Parisian might do. I took myself straight to the morgue. There I gave the concierge a very close description of Leblanc and, at the cost of a few sous, was led to the"-she stops-"to the gentleman in question. Doctor," she says, "would you mind if we sat?"

There is a bench not ten feet off. With my handkerchief-my only handkerchief-I wipe it dry for her. She nods her thanks and drops onto the bench by scarcely visible degrees, her spine never once unbending. She sets her parasol alongside her. She examines her gloves. She says:

"Doctor, I wonder if you quite know where you're treading."

"No," I answer. "I never do. You may see from the condition of my boots."

She resists the temptation to look down, but something unexpectedly warm brews from those strange irises.

"It would be pleasant to trust you," she says.

"I don't yet know what I'm to be trusted with."

And that's the last thing either of us says for some five minutes. A curious thing happens, though. As we sit there, the fog begins to pull apart, like an emulsion dissolving into its constituents, and I realize, with a small shudder, that we are sharing this park with other human beings.

But what is there to dread about these specimens? A grisette, slumped halfway off a bench. A convent-school girl and her grandfather, sharing cheese and brown bread. A pair of law students. In normal weather, I would scarcely have remarked on any of them. This morning, there is something miraculous about their very ordinariness.

I say:

"He's here."

The Baroness's face turns an inch toward mine.

"Those were Leblanc's last words," I tell her. "He was announcing someone's arrival. Whose?"

And rather than meet my eye, she stares at a space just to our west.

On the other side of the path, three yards down, sits an old soldier, crouched over the Quotidienne. He wears a Louis XV uniform, with a pair of crossed swords on the back and, hanging from his neck, the Cross of Saint-Louis. He's the kind of relic you regularly find in places like these, keeping warm with memories, exchanging insolent glances with Napoleonic officers, sporting a large white ribbon in his buttonhole to show he's on the right side of history.

Of all our newfound neighbors, he is the one who attracts the least notice. Why, then, is the Baroness stiffening at the sight of him? Pricked by chivalry, I am about to suggest we change our seats, when I am stopped by the Baroness's voice, calling across the gravel walk.

"Monsieur Vidocq, would you care to join us? You'll be able to hear much better."