"Of course they did," says Father Time, unf lappable. "That's why we brought the other boy."

And he re Leb lanc reenters the picture.

Through discreet inquiries, he had managed to locate a woman-a laundress and former prostitute named Felicite Neveu-who had been in the Conciergerie during Marie-Antoinette's final days and who had become, at no small risk to her safety, one of the queen's most ardent defenders. Idolized the woman and didn't care who knew. No one else had been so kind to her, she'd say, so gracious, so (for want of a more acceptable word) Christian.

Felicite especially liked to tell of the day her own son had come to visit. The queen had made a special point of saying how charming the boy was. And how-you must imagine her, brushing a tear from her noble cheek-how closely he resembled her own Louis-Charles. Felicite had been so moved by the queen's grief that she had resolved, upon her release, to give up her criminal ways and dedicate her life to Marie-Antoinette's memory.

Leblanc courted her over a round of drinks at Thicoteau's-and then took the perilous step of telling her the plan he had in mind. Before the evening was done, she was on board.

"On board?"

"Why, yes," says Father Time, blinking mildly. " Her boy would go to the Tower, and Louis-Charles would go free."

"But what sort of mother would agree to such a thing?"

"A desperate one. Her boy was dying, you see. In great squalor, with no hope for recovery. She must have reasoned-well, at least in the Temple , her son would have Dr. Carpentier looking in every morning, Leblanc the rest of the day. Exercise, games. Fresh air on the tower platform. Oh, and a decent burial, that was most important. She couldn't afford to bury him herself, and she wanted him to have a stone. Even if it had the wrong name on it."

And being a royalist sympathizer, she couldn't have guessed that Louis-Charles would never receive a stone. That he would be thrown into an unmarked grave, covered in lime, left to rot. . . .

"So this other boy was in the hobbyhorse that Father wheeled up."

"Yes, indeed. Terribly weak, poor thing, but before we closed up the panel, he-he managed to tell us how comfy it was inside. Really charming manners."

Three hours later, Father went back to the Temple with his forged papers to reclaim the hobbyhorse. Professor Corneille bided his time two blocks away in the baggage wagon. The night was still and damp, the crickets chirring, the stones slumbered in the heat. . . .

But the professor never once drowsed. How could he? The time passed like an agony. One hour. Two hours. Still no sign of Father.

"I confess I despaired of him more than once. Something must have happened, that was the only explanation, and I didn't know what to do. All I could think of was having to break the news to your poor mother.

"And then-oh, it must have been well after one in the morning- he came! Wheeling that silly horse.

"Well, we set it down in the rear of the wagon, and we both climbed back in, and we drove-oh, it was a good long time, yes. Your father was guiding the whole way. Turn right at the corner. . . . And now left. . . . Bear right again. Me, of course, I hadn't a clue where we were going. I assumed they'd arranged-oh, some kind of safe house, I suppose, your father and Leblanc. I never would've guessed we'd end up where we did."

"And where was that?"

"At the apartment of Felicite Neveu."

"The washerwoman?"

"Oh, yes ! I remember, she lived in the-yes, it was the Rue des Coutures-Saint-Gervais. Nowhere you'd want to be alone at night, I can tell you."

"What happened then?"

"Well, your father tripped the catch on the hobbyhorse. He took the boy out, very gently. And then he-he carried him upstairs to Mademoiselle Neveu."

"But which boy was it?" I can barely restrain myself now. "The dauphin or the changeling?"

"I've no idea! " cries the old man, shrugging toward the heavens. "I had to stay with the wagon, so I never did see the face. And, of course, the two boys did resemble each other. You'd have had to study them rather closely to-to distinguish them.

"Well, you may imagine-when your father returned, I was-oh, perfectly exploding with questions-but he cut me off. Quite brusque about it. All is well, he said."

The same words he used with my mother.

"Naturally, I-I asked him what he meant. He was quiet a good while, and then he just-he said it again. All is well. And nothing more."

"And he never spoke of that evening again?"

"Oh, no. And don't think I didn't try to draw him out, either."

I stare once more into the old man's face. The bleary smile, the bleary brain. To think of him carrying off such a grand and dangerous folly. And never speaking of it until this very minute.

And yet what has he told me, after all? The mystery hasn't so much been solved as funneled down: into that span of two hours between when Father went into the Temple and when he came back. Somewhere in that interstice lies the answer. To Louis-Charles' fate. To Father's fate. To everything.

And I'm no closer to knowing now than I was before . . . and Father Time is slipping deeper into his cloud. The mouth is folding down, the eyes skimming over . . . the time for questions is drawing to an end.

"What did you think," I ask, "when you heard that Louis-Charles had died that very day?"

"Well, I-I didn't know what to think. The boy in the tower-he might have died. But which boy was it?" He pauses to let the prospect play out before him. "All the same, I wouldn't be shocked to hear the dauphin was alive today. Though I-I suppose we would have heard, eh?

"Oh, but I just remembered something else your father told me. This was many months later. He'd already given up his practice by then, and we were having-yes, that's right-the usual coffee at the Wise Athenian. Awfully quiet he was. Thunderously gloomy-well, by then, he was always gloomy.