"Is there anything else?"

He spends a few more seconds tracking the shuttlecock. Then he raises his head, and once more, that jaw angles toward us.

"Do you suppose we might visit the Luxembourg?"

"The palace? We could try to arrange something, yes."

"No, I'm sorry. I mean the Luxembourg Gardens."

"Well, as a matter of fact, Dr. Carpentier and I were strolling in the gardens just the other day. Weren't we, Hector?"

"Why, yes."

It's the first time I've spoken since entering the room-and the first time Charles has really drawn me into his ken. As if to atone for the oversight, he spends the next half minute absorbing me. In all my particulars.

"You were there?" he asks. "Were the chestnuts in bloom?"

"The chestnuts . . ."

How to tell him this? I don't know. On every side of me lay a bank of fog.

"Yes," I say. "They were in bloom."

He studies me a while longer.

"Doctor, you look like a rabbit I used to have."

"A r a bbit ? "

"He was very loyal, but something ate him. A fox, perhaps."

CHAPTE R 2 3.

A Scene of Great Carnage Involving Pistachios We leave fo r Paris late that afternoon. Not in a stage, as we came, but in a cariole personally hired by Vidocq. As punishment, he puts Goury on the driver's box, but the only protest we hear on the way back to town is from the vehicle itself, arthritic through the rims, spitting up stones and rotten pears-even, at one crossing, a turtle, pitched on its back, waving farewell as we turn the corner.

Next to me Charles Rapskeller slumbers. In a dead man's clothes. The carefully brushed round hat, the old-fashioned waistcoat, the black trousers and black wool socks . . . these came straight from Tepac's wardrobe. The only articles that are unmistakably Charles' are the copper-buckled shoes and the coat, which is, providentially, the same shade of yellow as the mud. Into this coat he climbs and, as soon as the carriage is in motion, falls straight to sleep. The only sign that something lives inside that yellow carapace is his protruding face, soft and sun-reddened.

"Is he really sleeping?" growls Vidocq.

"I think so."

"Maybe you'd be so kind as to check."

Gingerly, I pry open an eyelid.

"Asleep. Yes ."

"Then maybe you can tell me. How'd we get ourselves in such a

fucking mess?"

In our short acquaintance, I've never seen him this glum. Two men dead. A killer still at liberty. Murderers queuing up for instructions at confessional booths . . .

"And don't forget," Vidocq says, as if he were divining my inventory. "A so-called king. Who doesn't know he's supposed to be a king. What the hell am I supposed to do with him?"

"I don't know. . . ."

"Ahh." Vidocq tips his head in mock deference. "Dr. Hector's got something on his mind."

"No, it's just that . . ."

"What?"

"He fits."

"How do you mean he fits?"

"What I mean is if Louis the Seventeenth really was rescued-spirited away, as the old story says-then we would expect to find in him a certain amount of damage. Even today."

I'm waiting for him to stop me. But for once he's all ears.

"Think," I say, "of all that boy suffered during his years in the Temple. Think of the abuse to his mind and body. He was beaten, he was shut away for months in confinement. He suffered a painful and wasting illness. He was separated from his sister. He saw his own father dragged away, he was forced to testify against his mother. Even if he'd survived it all, the trauma might have forced some-some rearrangement. . . ."