The Black Tower by Louis Bayard

notices in the newspapers?” asks Vidocq, in a quieter tone. “No memorial services?”
    I shake my head.
    “So…” He removes his shako, glances heavenward. “Word must have been slow to reach the—the lamented Monsieur Leblanc. He went to his death looking for a man who was already dead. The angels weep.”
    And now another voice enters the picture. Not the voice of angels.
    “Good afternoon, Monsieur Hector.”
    Nankeen stands before us in a cloud of swallowtail, framed almost perfectly by the Panthéon’s portico. Gold buttons and a lace jabot and a trailing indolence—he must have just slept through a lecture on torts.
    “You’re not going to introduce me?” Smiling, he angles his spectacled nose toward Vidocq. “May I ask whom I have the honor of addressing?”
    “You’ll have the honor of my foot up your ass if you don’t move along.”
    It’s important to point out he hasn’t raised his voice a fraction, but his intent is clear enough to mottle Nankeen’s pale brow. Who would have expected this from a veteran of Louis XV’s army—who, by the looks of things, is eighty if he’s a day?
    “See here.” A bitter smile crawls across Nankeen’s face. “I don’t believe there’s any call for that.”
    Vidocq seizes him by the lapels of his swallowtail coat and hoists him straight up in the air. Nankeen’s boots, suspended a foot above the ground, execute a pas seul. His eyes twitch, the very threads of his clothing recoil…but the smile never quite unfixes itself, even through the gale of Vidocq’s roar.
    “Was I unclear? Was I unclear? ”
    One good thrust, and Nankeen falls to earth a good body’s length from where he started.
    “Mind your elders!” cries Vidocq. “Move along!”
    With clinical attentiveness, he watches Nankeen reach for his toppled hat and, without a backward look, trot round the corner.
    “This papa of yours,” he says, peering off in the direction of the Val de Grâce. “He never mentioned any dauphins, I don’t suppose?”
    “Never. He was—he was the son of a notary. Mother came from potato merchants. We weren’t the type to mix with royalty.”
    “Ah, but you know the old saying, I’m sure. Strange times, strange bedfellows? And if there was ever a strange time, it was the Revolution.”
    He does something quite unexpected then: loops his hand round my elbow and, with a gentle pressure, pulls me along. We’re strolling now through these narrow, gently decanting streets: gentlemen of leisure, fresh from the Théâtre des Italiens.
    “I was in Arras,” says Vidocq, “when all the wheels were coming off. We had a woman there, I’ll never forget her, Citizeness Lebon. Used to be a nun in the abbey at Vivier until the Jacobins forced her to marry the curé of Neuville. A real love match, as it turned out. She decided who the Republic’s enemies were, he made sure they died for their sins. I was there the day they executed Monsieur de Vieux Pont on account of his parrot.
    “Seems Citizeness Lebon had overheard said parrot crying, ‘ Vive le Roi! ’ Before the week was out, the parrot’s owner had been divorced from his head. The bird himself was pardoned and handed over to the citizeness for reeducation. She was still working on him, probably, when they came for her .”
    Half smiling, he tilts his head toward mine.
    “You can see how things worked in those days,” he says. “A woman of the cloth becomes a woman of the people and spends her waking hours with a royalist parrot. Three estates, rubbing shoulders under one Republic.”
    Without my realizing it, the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève has stolen up on us. Once more we stand on the corner. Once more I stare at the crackling plaster housefronts, the old well, the mud-blackened gutters…the street itself, falling away at such a pitch that horses rarely venture down it. Everything looms more real, somehow, through the departing fog-floes.
    “So you think my father might have rubbed shoulders with a