Father Time shrugs now. The briefest of motions, and yet the fabric of his old coat actually retains its new shape even as the shoulders return to their former position.

"Naturally," he says, "the job was advertised as a-a high sort of duty. Requiring a doctor of pure republican credentials. Rare skill. I doubt your father had ever been courted so fiercely before."

I close my eyes. I try to imagine-me-surrounded by good citizens, hearing words like honor and calling. Patrie.

"How long did he attend the dauphin?"

"Right up to the end, nearly."

"But-why did he never tell me?"

"Oh, well, at the time, you see, you were a little sprig. No more than three, eh? You wouldn't have known a dauphin from a-from a dolphin."

"But, Mother . . ."

"She didn't know, either. He went out, mm, an hour earlier every morning, that was the only difference. Told her he was needed at the hospital. Yes, and always came home for lunch. Punctual sort, your papa. No one . . ." He reaches over suddenly, brushes a speck of dirt from my vest. "No one would have guessed anything was amiss."

"He couldn't even tell his own wife?"

"Oh, he didn't dare. It might have been her death warrant. Don't you see, your father was taking an enormous risk. In those days, assisting the royal family-helping the children of Louis the Sixteenth in any way-why, you could pay for that with your life. Hundreds already had. Thousands."

"But Barras asked him to. The Committee asked him to-"

"Ah, that's just it! Today, the Committee's on board. Tomor row, it changes its mind. Day after tomorrow, a whole new Committee! And whoever did the bidding of the last one . . . giving up his head to Old Growler before sundown."

Without thinking, he sketches a line across his throat. A firm hand, not a tremor. He might have made a fine surgeon himself.

"Monsieur," I say. "You must forgive me, I still don't understand. How could anyone blame my father for trying to save a young boy's life?"

"Oh." His eyes swirl out of focus. "That's-that's not what they- wanted him to . . ."

"What, then?"

Squinting, he crouches and scans the full perimeter of the room- as though the train of his thought were even now scurrying toward the floorboards.

"Yes," he says, folding his lips down. "I asked him that myself once. We were at our usual table-the Wise Athenian, I've told you about the Wise Ath-I have?-the weekly coffee, yes, it was your father's turn to pay-he would insist on that, he would-where was I? Oh, yes, he was going on about these dreadful commissaries and committees. Ha! Death by bureaucracy, he called it. Nicely turned, eh? Well, I suppose I must have become a little irritated on his behalf because I said, 'Well, now, why would they hire such a-such a sublime physician as yourself if they weren't going to listen to him? ' "

"And what did he say?"

"Nothing at first. That was his way, of course, he was-ten parts thought to one part speech. And at last-it was just as we were getting up from the table, we were-ha! -brushing the macaroon crumbs from our coat sleeves-well, that's when he said-and I'll never forget it-he said, They don't want me to heal that boy. They want me to make sure he dies."

CH APTER 16.

A Fatal Disease Is Diagnosed- at the Very Precipice of Death Like a tallow c a nd le, Father Time's brain gutters and crackles and throws off a good greasy light, but its span is brief and its end conclusive. Speech fails, then consciousness, and before another five minutes have passed, he has fallen across his straw pallet-at a cumbersome tangent, like a dropped ceiling beam. All that's left to do is to remove his boots before bidding him good night.

Over the next two days, I do all I can to resume our conversation. Outwardly he is all eagerness. Inside, something balks, and no manner of private hints-the Temple, the Wise Athenian-will quite uncork him. The best I can secure is a promise, vaguely worded, to take me to "the archives" someday.

Where these archives are, what they contain . . . none of this can be determined, hard as I ply him. Through all of Saturday and Sunday, I wait for the clouds to pass. Monday comes round with nothing more to show for my labors. Only the old routine, waiting to be shouldered. I leave the house at the same time: nine-fifteen. I am bound for the same place: the ecole de Medecine. The one difference is this. When I'm twenty or so paces from my door, a fiacre rolls up. A gendarme leans out of it.

"Dr. Carpentier?"

"Yes ?"

"You're wanted."

He's under no charge to say who wants me. There's no need. I climb

in, and the gendarme calls up to the driver.

"Number Six, Rue Sainte-Anne."

My initiation into the Surete (Number Six, as it's known to intimates)

comes via the rear courtyard. My escort leads me into a marble-f loored entry and presses casually against a leather wall panel, which swings in to reveal a spiral staircase. On the first f loor, another panel swings open on a long corridor, illuminated almost entirely by skylights.

Down this hallway the gendarme leads me, and as I peer into the open offices, a clammy fear takes hold of me. Who are these men, with their red hands and their coarse blue trousers and the patches sewed on with twine? Where are the police?

A good half minute passes before I realize . . . and you will have to imagine the sudden lift in my stomach . . . these are the police.

Unbidden, the words of Nankeen circle back. Impossible anymore to tell the law enforcers from the lawbreakers.

Well, it is hard for Parisians, in these early days of the Restoration, to twine themselves round the idea-Vidocq's idea-that catching criminals might require men who look like them, think and act like them. The officers of the Brigade de Surete may lack for uniforms but not for pasts.