Charlotte herself is the first to greet me. Her face even more chaffed than usual, her eyes black and fathomless.

"Monsieur Hector," she exclaims in broken accents.

Quickly, I make a mental inventory of our party. There's Father Time, wrapped in his own coverlet. The law students, all three of them, and in their enclosure, a young woman in a blanket, with bare shoulders and beautiful auburn hair. Tonight's conquest, although it's not clear which student has conquered her.

From that loosely knit crowd, a small disheveled figure emerges. Mother: her tulle cap discarded, her curls lopsided.

"Oh," she says.

Her bird bones quiver as she folds herself round me.

"You're alive," she says.

"Of course."

"Well, then." She releases me with a nod. "That's fine."

Over her shoulder, I catch a sudden glimpse of Charles. So lost in rapture that he doesn't see me approach. I have to wave my hand in front of him.

"You're all right?" I ask.

"Oh, yes. But what a grand fire it is ! "

The f lames are no longer contenting themselves with the rear of the building. Tongues of yellow and orange snarl the curtains. The f loor joists crackle and heave. Smoke churns through the cracks in the walls and doors-as if the building's deepest rages were being released. Yes, it's a grand fire.

"Oh! " cries Charles. "You forgot your book."

Father's journal slides once more into my hand. I stare down at the green calf 's leather.

"Did you-"

Did you read it? That's what I want to ask him. But all I can manage is . . .

"Thank you."

Night after night, the occupants of Maison Carpentier have waged war across the dinner table. In extremis we find a fraternity. Neighbors swirl round us-Monsieur Senard the moneylender, Madame Fleuriais and her elderly aunt and their Pomeranian-full of questions and commiserations. We turn our backs to them. This is our calamity.

And when the front window cracks open and a jet of white f lame shoots out, bisecting the air around us, we shout in unison. Another window splinters. The building's bass rumble rises to a baritone, and just then I hear Charlotte say:

"Where's Madame?"

It's in the firelight that I find her: a swaddled figure stealing toward the house like a burglar.

"Mother! "

Charlotte and Father Time both try to restrain me, but I'm too fast for them. I'm too fast for all of Paris, I'm racing the entire populace toward that front door, but the fire wants only me, for the heat that greets me as I step over the threshold seems cut to my exact form. I sink into it, and everything goes black for a second, and then I find myself crawling across the remains of our dining room, I feel the crunch of glass, I smell the contents of Charlotte's pantry: burnt f lour, caramelizing sugar. My throat seizes up, my lungs squeeze down. And my brain turns to fog, which is why it takes me several seconds to recognize the obstruction in front of me as my mother.

I wrap my arms round her, and I try to lift, but the sheer mass of her defeats me. Rolling her over, I find, pressed against her bosom, her box of silver.

In vain do I try to pry it from her. I have to hoist her and the box and carry them both to the door, the fire roaring after us. Within seconds, the rectangular fruitwood table and the convict-made china and the ivory landshape have been submerged in f lame. And as I race out the front door, I can feel the fire skipping after me, stinging my heels, pulling my hair.

It's only when I reach the street that I realize my nightshirt is on fire. Jeanne-Victoire is the one who pulls it off me, stamps the f lames into silence. I almost laugh, finding myself half-naked again in her presence, but there's no air to laugh with, and I drop to my knees and bend over Mother's half-conscious form.

Her skin has turned a faint blue, and her mouth is smeared black, and the spasms in her vocal cords make a strange music, high and thin, like a recorder.

"Don't worry," I whisper. "You're safe."

The sound stops. The tarred fingers of her right hand reach for mine, and the heat of the house seems to weld us together. By degrees, though, the heat evaporates, and her fingers grow cold, from the tips down to the root. Then the palm turns cold. Then the arm.

I reach for the other arm, still folded round that box of silver. It's every bit as cold. Every bit as still.

No one says a word to me at first. Then Charles steps forward. His arms form a kind of fidgeting square around me. Later I will realize he is trying to touch me.

"I know how it is, Hector. I lost my mother, too."