"Were you a boy when it happened?"

To this he makes no reply, except to close his hands once more over the ribbon, as though he could squeeze the memory from it.

"Why did you hide it, Charles?"

"So they wouldn't find it," he answers, his own voice rising. "Who?"

"The bad men."

The rain is rivering down his face now.

"They . . ." He wipes his mouth with his forearm. "They took away my garden. They said I couldn't keep any of my f lowers. So I took my lilac and I planted it here and I put the ribbon where they . . . where they . . ."

He puts a hand to his face.

"No," he says. "That was a dream."

Very gently, I put one hand under his jaw. He doesn't recoil. I put the other hand alongside his temple. By degrees, I tilt his head toward the west side of the Tuileries palace-the one angle I never thought to afford him-the one angle that Louis the Seventeenth would have seen every day, coming back from his outings. The one he would have remembered best. If he were still alive.

For what seems like an eternity, Charles studies those pavilion roofs, and I study-him. Which means I am watching in the exact moment when he opens.

Yes, that's the best word, I think. A world of light rushes into him. The lilac bush . . . the ribbon . . . the cornices and columns of that ugly palace . . . they all gather into meaning. With such force that he's literally thrown onto his back.

"I have this dream sometimes," he moans. "I dream I was . . ."

"You were," I say, surprised at the assurance in my own voice. "You are."

His eyes glow white amid the rain and mist. His mouth opens. . . .

"What?" I say. "I can't hear you."

"Is it too late? "

"Too late for what? "

"To go back? "

Now i t might be he simply wants to get out of the rain. But when I look back on this moment, I will see our fates twining themselves more tightly round us, as a vine hugs a trellis. Why else would I answer as quickly as I do, without a thought for any other answer?

"IT'S TOO L ATE." CHAPTE R 34

Not Since Waterloo Th e s to rm passes quickly enough, but we're too wet to do anything but go home. There we find clothes and a fire already blazing and a baguette and two cups of hot, bitter coffee and even a good-humored reproof from my mother.

"Goodness' sakes. Gentlemen should always carry umbrellas."

By now, Charles' customary good nature has been chaffed into something heavy and inward. Every question invokes only silence, and Charlotte, in the act of spooning cabbage onto his plate, feels compelled to ask after his health.

"You seem a bit quiet is all," she adds.

"Perhaps the Vicomte's estate has uncovered new heirs," suggests Nankeen.

Charles, knowing nothing of vicomtes or estates, fails to rise to the bait. His movements, his expressions grow steadily more listless, until at last he sets down his knife and fork entirely.

"It is a great puzzle," says Rosbif. "Thank the good Lord we have in our midst an esteemed physician. Your diagnosis, Monsieur Hector?"

For several long seconds, I study my plate. Then, in a voice of newfound authority:

"Monsieur Charles needs only to shake off his cares. I propose to help him."

"How? "

"By taking him to the Palais-Royal," I announce. "We shall leave in two hours."

La te at night, the former palace of the Duc d'Orleans glows like a pyre. Floods of light, streaming up from the foundations, sweep over an army of Parisians, captured in the act of choosing sins. Will they go down to the cellar for the dancing dogs and the blind ballad singer? Or will they stride along the ground-f loor arcades, sampling snuff boxes and alabaster clock-cases and obscene etchings of milkmaids?

Or will they go still higher, to the glittering realm of the dining rooms? Thirty years ago, it's said, Camille Desmoulins leapt onto one of the cafe tables here and declared revolution. These days, you'll seldom find anyone leaving his chair. Wives sit inches away from prostitutes; tradesmen buy drinks for adventurers; rogues and swindlers twine their arms like lovers.

And the wine f lows, though the intoxication here is something more general. Something to do with being alive, I think.

And in the Cafe des Milles Colonnes, the champagne f lows.

"Mm," says Charles, drawing in the fumes. "It tickles and burns at the same time. . . ."

I call back the waiter and order another magnum and, for good measure, pate de foie aux pruneaux and cold boulettes and two apple tarts and . . . I forget what else. We eat and drink in the gleam of all those glassed columns, watching romances bloom and die-until we are accosted by two women in low-cut silk ball dresses, who look at us as though we're every bit as interesting as what we're watching. "We were thinking you gentlemen might care for company."