I had no idea if Chanel had already recovered the manuscript from Vennet, but either way, I was betting she would take the bait. It wasn’t much of a plan, hardly better than a derringer without bullets, but it was all I had. I was racked by anxiety and doubt, excoriating myself for my foolishness, but once the letter was sent there was no going back. My motivations were several, each of them slight when considered alone but constituting an irrefutable argument when combined. First of all, I coveted the Baudelaire manuscript, and I figured I still had a chance of acquiring it. As a reader of crime novels, I had an interest in solving Vennet’s murder. I figured that if there was half a chance of acquiring the exit visa Massu had dangled before me, I might as well take it. But above all I wanted to verify Madeleine’s story, and visiting the Baudelaire Society was my best chance at certainty.

The reply finally arrived Friday around noon. When I heard the familiar tinkle of the postman’s bell, I raced downstairs, found the blue envelope, and tore it open: I was invited to meet Chanel at the Society headquarters the following Monday afternoon. I would have to wait another three whole days! What if the Germans were to arrive before then?

The weekend weather was summery and joyous. I continued to head out for walks at daybreak, wisps of mist drifting through the streets and across the river. Paris, in its state of suspended animation, was lovelier than ever. On Saturday, couples ambled arm in arm along the quays, here and there fishermen cast their rods into the river, and the bouquinistes tended to their stalls. All of these scenes were tinged with nostalgia, as if they already belonged to the past, while I began to seriously consider, for the first time, a future beyond the here and now: leaving Paris, making my way somehow to America or Argentina, starting again, making a new life. In every such snapshot of the life to come I was not alone—Madeleine was there by my side.

On Sunday, I woke to the sound of distant artillery fire coming from the east. All at once, the previous day’s idyll was forgotten and in the streets Parisians hauled suitcases to the nearest Métro station. I too ventured out, lumbered with notebooks and papers wrapped in string, to visit my librarian friend Georges. Weeks earlier he’d agreed to hide the book I’d been writing for so many years, a book that would now have to remain unfinished, at least for as long as the war continued. But it would survive in its hiding place, the archives of the Bibliothèque Nationale. It gives me a shiver of pleasure to know a piece of me is still there.