out in the window seat overlooking the courtyard and I read my father's journal. And whenever I tire of that, I need only glance through

the glazed panes to find Charles. Spreading mulch. Scattering pomegranate seeds. Planting an oleander in a blue porcelain pot. Digging,

weeding, watering, pruning.

As the afternoon wears on, his neck grows pinker, and great ellipses of sweat bleed across his blouse, and still he works on, and still

he colors everything I read.

This a.m., Leblanc and I surprised Charles in cell w/ 4 pots of f lowers. . . .

He said he learned long ago-in Tuileries gardens-one must talk to one's f lowers. . . .

The aversion to being touched. The fear of going to sleep in the dark. Line by line, the congruences yield themselves up.

When evening comes, Charles is too exhausted for dinner. He makes straight for his room, and after I've helped to take his boots off, he drops straight into his bed.

"I don't think I shall change tonight. . . ."

"Well, that's all right," I tell him. "You've had a long day." "Yes. . . ."

"Tomorrow, I'll take you to see the city, would you like that?" "Mm." He stares at the ceiling. "I'm going to sleep now." I draw the chair to the doorway. I breathe in the talcum powder of

the general's widow. I listen to the fretting of the grandfather clock downstairs.

"You should probably wait ten minutes," says Charles, faintly. "Just to be sure I'm really asleep."

"Would you mind if I read a little? To myself?"

"Not at all." Yawning, he lifts his head to squint me into his sights. "Is that the book? It looks old."

"It is, yes."

His head hovers there for two seconds longer, then drops onto the pillow.

"Good night, Hector."

"Good night."

Th e page I o pen to is the same one that consumed me last night. That scene (for so I conceive of them: scenes) where a young king first hears about his doctor's son.

If you took me home w/ you, we cd be brothers, he and I, and I'd keep very close watch on him, youd never have a moment's worry.

I read it once more now, and my thoughts run straight to that slumbering figure in the bed. My new friend, who likes me to sit watch over him every night and who may, in the same breath, be watching over me.

An hour later, I'm back in my garret, bending over the taper, when my attention is snagged by something on the street below.

For several minutes more, I stare down at the familiar outcroppings, trying to recapture what it was. A f lash of scarlet, like a cock's crest. No face, no body to connect to it . . . and yet this part is somehow larger than any whole.

Monsieur killed the wrong man, said Vidocq. What's more, he doesn't know he killed the wrong man. And that gives us time.

But if that's true, then who is out there watching us? And when will the time for watching end?

CHAPTE R 29.

The King of France Is Held Hostage Th e Su rete has a closet of costumes that would do credit to the Opera-Comique, but Vidocq has decided that, if Charles and I are to wander Paris unnoticed, we need something a little more "breathed upon." There is on the Rue Beautrellis a Jewish merchant known as "the Changer," who makes it his business to transform rascals into honest men, for the bargain price of thirty sous a day.

"Monsieur Jules ! " he intones, falling back on one of Vidocq's old aliases.

"And a good morning to you. Here are the two rogues I told you about."

"Mm," says the Changer. "Never know it to look at 'em, would you? All mother's milk."

"Curdled," answers Vidocq.

"Well, let me see now." He worms his arm through the stacks of garments. "We've got a magistrate, just been washed . . . cure . . . Russian soldier, most popular these days . . . English not so much. . . . That one's a poet. Got ink on the jabot, see? Doubles for beggar . . . And over here, I think you'll find a very plausible leper. Sores cost a bit more."

"I was inclining toward statesman," says Vidocq.

"Now if that's your line, you're in luck, my friend. Got a matching pair, just came back yesterday. Black cloth coats, see? Trousers are double-milled cassimere. Silk waistcoat. And since you're so beloved in these here precincts, Monsieur Jules, I'll even throw in boots."

With a haggling scowl, Vidocq holds one of the black coats next to me.