"Where are you going?" I ask.

"To celebrate, you damned fool. Just so happens I've got a young

filly back home. Waiting to be broken in, you get my drift. Oh, she's

got a field of clover you'd-"

"I love horses, too," says Charles.

"Yes," says Vidocq after a pause. "Fine animals. Now see if the

Marquis will spot you to dinner and a couple bottles of wine. Least he

can do. And don't leave the manse by yourselves. Send for some gendarmes, there's a station house not two blocks away. Drop my name,

if you must. And meet me back at Maison Vidocq, all right? Before we

retire tonight, we'll raise a toast to our triumph."

"Do you have champagne?" asks Charles hopefully.

"Do f lies eat shit?" he calls back, hauling open the doors. As usual, he takes with him a goodly portion of the room's oxygen. The air is definitely thinner, yes, and the walls themselves seem

to close round us as Charles says, in a soft tone:

"I'm not ready."

"I know."

He drops onto the settee. Holds his head in his hands. "I don't think I'll ever be ready."

"Well, I imagine every king feels that way. When he starts out.

And then he finds his way, doesn't he?"

The contours of his new suit collapse, inch by inch.

"I sometimes wish . . ."

"What?"

"I wish you'd left me back in Saint-Cloud."

With more time, I might be able to dissect the pang that catches

me midsection. I could even ask myself if he's right. But in the next

instant, the massive salon doors are f lung open, and four gendarmes

rush in.

There must be some mistake, I want to say. I haven't sent for you yet. "In the name of His Majesty Louis the Eighteenth, we hereby arrest

you, Charles Rapskeller . . ."

Stunned, Charles rises from his settee.

". . . for the crime of conspiring against the life of our beloved monarch . . ."

"Beloved who? " he whispers.

". . . and you, Hector Carpentier, as accomplice to aforementioned

act."