I resolved to leave the family I’d been boarding with and vanish more completely. I took to living underground, as generations of Parisian fugitives had done before me. For many years I have made my home in the labyrinth of quarries, sewers, tunnels, and catacombs below the city’s surface. The subterranean life is easy enough to enter into: all one needs is a belt buckle with which to lift the grates that lead below and a map of the maze of old limestone quarries and abandoned Métro tunnels under the city. Dry, spacious, and temperate, they make excellent habitations. I have made a home of several such places, moving only when another fugitive discovers my hideout or when some above-ground construction work makes it unsafe to remain there.

For the last few years, I have resided in the quarry below the Montparnasse cemetery—the grate is very near the crypt of the Baudelaire Society. An iron ladder leads into the quarry. Every afternoon, toward closing time, I stand in front of Baudelaire’s grave until the guardian blows his whistle. That’s what I was doing when we met. When I’m certain I can’t be seen, I hide among the gravestones until the guardian, having locked all the gates, returns to the gatehouse. When I am alone, I take my belt buckle, lift the lid of the grate, and slip into my abode. There are other grates outside the cemetery walls that I can use if, for one reason or another, I cannot be sure that I am alone in the cemetery, but as they are on the street I can only ever do so in the dead of night, and even then, between the homeless men and the streetsweepers, I am courting danger each time.

By far the most joyous occasion of this lifetime has been to find you again, dear Koahu, and to love you again. I never abandoned the hope that somehow we might be reunited, you and I. I never entirely lost faith that your nightmares would lead you back to me somehow. Like a spider in a dark corner, I waited for you. My faith in you has been vindicated. You came to me, even if you don’t know it. Something in you sought me out—how else could you possibly explain it? And though, with your little round glasses and funny mustache, you are much changed, the spirit of Koahu still lives in you.