"Nearly."

On either side of us, there's nothing but fallow wheat fields and

abandoned tracts. Through the long scraggly stretches of closeclipped grass, some wild poppies are stirring, and in the distance, you can make out a gypsum quarry and a mill, turning in violent hitches.

"I don't see any," he says.

"What?"

"Buildings. Paris has such tall ones."

"Oh, but we're still outside the city walls. Once we're in, you'll have

all the buildings you could desire. Why, look, even from here, you can make out the Hotel des Invalides."

"I don't like churches so much," he says. "They make me sneeze and fart all at once."

He blows an oval of vapor onto the glass. Rubs it away with his finger.

"Oh! " he cries. "That must be Paris! "

Up ahead, a brownstone wall, three meters high and twenty-four kilometers round, cinching Paris like a chastity belt. Any other city, I think, would have built such a wall to keep the barbarians out. Paris built its wall to keep the money in.

"What do they want?" asks Charles. "Those men."

"They're customs officers. They have to inspect us."

"Why?"

"To make sure we're paying our duties."

"What's a duty?"

"That's the-that's the money you pay the city. Whenever you bring something in."

"How funny," says Charles, hooking his thumb westward. "You pay for something back there-and then you pay all over again here."

"And keep paying," grumbles Vidocq, just as the flat-crowned, broad-brimmed black hat glides into the window frame.

"Goods to declare?"

"Nothing," Vidocq assures him. "Not so much as a scrap of hay."

"Well, then," he says, scratching his earlobe. "Maybe you'd be so kind as to show me your passports."

Through the mirror of his eyes, I'm recalled to the spectacle we present: Vidocq and I, bare-armed, in our old waistcoats, patched trousers.

"Monsieur," says the douanier, bearing down on Charles. "I believe I asked for your passport."

Charles keeps staring out the window.

"Monsieur," says the douanier, more pointedly.

"I'm afraid he doesn't have one," says Vidocq. "This gentleman has been apprehended on police business."

"That so?"

"I'd be happy to show you my identification. I'm-"

"You'll kindly keep your hands in plain view."

Grimacing, the customs officer bends his head over our papers. Then he steps back a pace. From nowhere, a stupefied grin snaps his face open.

"It is you! I knew it! "

Snatching the black hat off his own head, he presses it to his heart.