"Yes. As a matter of fact, he did."

"A bout what ? "

"You know, it must have been about the escape."

I stare long and hard at him, and it's only then that he understands what he's divulged. Confusion ripples through the gray tarns of his eyes.

"Well, you see, it was-there was no use keeping the boy where he was. That awful place! We had to-we had to spring him, you see. There was no other choice."

"But why didn't you tell me you were part of that?"

I know what he's going to say, though. Before it's even out of his mouth.

"Your blessed father, of course! He swore me to utter secrecy. No one was to know-no one-and after all, I am a man of my word, Hector. Whatever else one might say of me . . ."

He stares once more into the ruined interior of the house. Follows the motions of the rooks until he can't follow them anymore.

"And now?" I venture.

"Now? Oh, there doesn't seem much point anymore, does there? Keeping secrets." He sighs so faintly I can scarcely hear it. "If there ever was a point."

CHAPTE R 41.

The Trojan Hobbyhorse Thei r sc heme had an author, and his name was Virgil.

Like so many French revolutionaries, Professor Corneille revered dead Romans, and when my father approached him, he was reading the second book of the Aeneid: "How They Took the City." The great wooden horse, hauled inside the walls of Troy with its cache of Greeks. The city overrun . . . battlements in f lames . . . Hecuba wailing . . .

Why not the same trick on a smaller scale?

And so Professor Corneille bought a cedar hobbyhorse, four feet in height, five in length, and hollowed it out until it was large enough to hold a child. He put casters on it, used an awl to poke air holes, installed a panel with a secret catch over the cavity . . . and, after two days of work, declared the thing ready.

"Ready for what?" I ask.

"To be carried into the Temple. That very evening, your father took it in. The seventh of June it was."

The seventh of June. The very night he left that letter with my mother. Important business . . . not without danger . . . might not return . . .

And here was his business: driving to the Temple in a hired wagon with Professor Corneille and a hollowed-out hobbyhorse.

"Oh, they were surprised to see your father, I've no doubt. Even more surprised to see him rolling a wooden horse! But he explained the situation very calmly. Said he'd been deputized by the Committee to present this-what did we come up with?-yes, a peace offering. From Prussia."

"Why would they believe that?"

"Well, of course, we had to forge some papers."

And here Professor Corneille found in himself a previously unsuspected gift. Using Father's own entry visas as a model, and with nothing more than a scroll of parchment, a candle, and a pair of inkwells, he re-created the signature of Citizen Mathieu and the unique stamp of the Committee of General Security, right down to the rancid-butter shade of wax.

The papers were unimpeachable, and it was too late in the evening to verify the orders personally. So the horse was suffered to pass through.

"A nd what t hen ? "

"Your father personally carried it up to Louis-Charles' cell."

"Why?"

"Isn't it obvious? To put the boy inside."

"But how were you to get the horse back down? Without attracting suspicion? "

That was the work of another document, which arrived three hours later. Likewise from "the Committee," likewise forged. Announcing that the hobbyhorse in question was now to be removed forthwith.

"After only three hours?"

"You have to understand, my boy, we had one very important thing on our side. The sheer capriciousness of the Committee. Everyone knew whatever they blessed at sunset could be illegal by sunrise. So it was with the hobbyhorse. 'Upon second consideration, the Committee has resolved that no son of a tyrant shall be granted idle amusement while France's children cry for bread'-oh, I forget the exact language, but it sounded distinctly plausible.

"At any rate, it worked. They let your father in. They even assigned him a couple of guards to help him carry the thing back down."

"But wouldn't they have inspected the cell after Father left?" I ask. "He said the guards checked on Louis-Charles several times a night. And first thing in the morning."