And then, in the next second, he's crumbling like old mortar. Tipping into the Grand Cascade's waiting basin with a muff led splash.

I hear a woman shout. I see a blur of wool and steel as the missionaries gallop toward the river and the Russians circle in confused alarum. And then, from nowhere, the waterworks come screaming into life-weeks ahead of schedule. Great plumes of sun-dazzled water, hooping and spiraling round us-and weaving a cocoon round the whirling figure of Monsieur Tepac.

Later, I won't be able to recall jumping into the water. My memory will click in at the precise moment that my hands close round Tepac's shoulders. The weight of him! Which is the weight of the water, too, soaking through all those waistcoats-and the weight of that face. Pale and trembling. Coughing up columns of water.

"Is there a . . ."

Doctor . . . That's the word that hovers on my lips.

And what a shock! To realize I'm calling for myself.

With a mighty heave, I drag his body out of the basin, tip him by degrees over the balustrade, and drag him toward the grass. I look round. The grounds are utterly deserted, and his breath is still coming, in long straggling rasps, but the only symptoms I can read in this moment are my own. The magnetic crackling of the hair on my arms. My heart slamming off my breastbone . . .

And in the seconds that follow, a span of three years drops away, and I am standing in the dissecting laboratory of the ecole de Medecine, and Dr. Dumeril is bidding me to . . .

"Slow down, Monsieur. Take it, symptom by symptom, if you please."

Contusion on forehead . . .

That's it.

. . . likely related to fall. Does not appear serious.

Continue.

Throat wound: relatively superficial. Carotid artery . . .

Yes . . . ?

. . . and jugular vein still intact. Patient still able to breathe, w/ difficulty.

Continue.

Side wound . . .

And here . . . here the act of enumerating for Dr. Dumeril gives way before the act of touching-feeling-that raw f lap of skin.

Possible . . . possible rupture of spleen . . .

But it's not the spleen I'm conscious of, no, it's his eyes. He looks somehow as if it were happening to someone else.

I at once applied pressure to wound.

Except all I have to apply is my own hand, and how inadequate it is. The blood runs through the crevices of my fingers, and the skin round his mouth grows whiter and whiter, and . . .

"You'll be all right," I whisper.

A coldness, quite different from the chill of the water, is stealing over him as the blood draws back to his heart and the orphaned extremities quiver.

"No," I say. "No. Look."

Extending my index finger, I lower it toward his half-seeing eyes. I draw it back. I lower it once more.

"Watch the finger. That's all you have to do."

Something sparks in the depths of his irises. The pupils slowly narrow to a point.

"That's it," I say. "Don't think of anything else. Just the finger."

And gradually, as he draws me into focus, the trembling begins to ebb, and a vein of color reveals itself in his cheeks, and even the blood-or do I imagine this?-even this begins to abate.

With a stif led cry, I look up to find Vidocq-cast in such a deep shadow by the sun that, at first, I think he's f lung a satchel over his shoulder. But then the satchel reconfigures itself into a man. In a mariner's suit.

The man is conscious, yes, but utterly still in the grip of a larger will. Vidocq f lings him onto the grass as if he were a bag of feed. Places one knee on the man's back, draws out a pair of handcuffs, and binds the wrists together in a single practiced stroke.