“Is that where you went, every night, when we were together?”

“Yes. I worked there. Lately it has become too dangerous.”

“And the singer—do you love her?”

Right on cue, there was a knock at the door downstairs—two loud knocks followed by three softer, quicker ones. Madeleine rushed to the window and leaned out. “That’s her now.” She scurried down the stairs and opened the door. I heard the two of them murmur a few minutes before Madeleine returned alone, holding a boltcutter. She went to an armoire, pulled open a drawer, and took out a bundle of banknotes.

“There’s a train departing the Gare d’Austerlitz in a little under an hour,” she said, approaching me and pressing the money and boltcutter into my hands. “If we hurry we can make it.”

We walked through a drifting golden fog toward the Île de la Cité. The rumble of battle was very near now, punctuated by the occasional explosions of suburban petrol depots. Along the way we saw stray dogs and cats, freed by their fleeing owners and scrounging for food. We even saw a cow that must have wandered into town from the suburbs in search of pasture. At the Quai de la Tournelle, we stopped at Vennet’s bookstall. While Madeleine stood watch, I took the boltcutter. I was about to clamp its jaws around the lock when from around a corner appeared a mounted Republican Guard. Madeleine slid between me and the boltcutter, threw her arms around my neck and kissed me until the horse had passed, as if Paris were still a city where two lovers might embrace by the river. With my arms reaching around her, I squeezed the handles of the boltcutter and felt the lock give way. When the mounted policeman had disappeared, we opened the green wooden lid of the stall.

There it was, the leather satchel Vennet had been carrying as he ambled away from the auction house toward his own demise, not so long ago. I looked inside and gushed with relief to see the slim red leather volume with the words embossed in gold: The Education of a Monster, Ch. Baudelaire. We set off again in the direction of the station.