Their spirits were high when they met the girls on the platform, but Sylvie cautioned them. “It’s a—what you say?—rough sort of neighborhood. You’ll need to watch out for pickpockets and, even worse, bag snatchers.”

When they exited the station, they saw she hadn’t exaggerated the case. This neighborhood was far from the heart of Paris. It reminded Lucy of the Bronx and Brooklyn neighborhoods she’d been warned to avoid as a girl growing up on the East Side of Manhattan, the neighborhoods where her father made sure the car doors were locked when he had to drive through them to get to the zoo or the beach.

“Sylvie wasn’t kidding,” Sue murmured in Lucy’s ear, with a nod at the tough guys, who seemed to be everywhere. “I’ve never seen so many shaved heads and leather jackets in my life.”

“Keep your bag close,” whispered Lucy, thinking that if they were still being followed by that guy she’d seen tracking them at Versailles, it would be very easy for him to blend into the crowd.

“It’s this way,” said Sylvie, leading them down a street lined with stores offering low-priced, low-quality goods and with street vendors, who urged them to buy illegal, fake designer scarves and “Rolex” watches for twenty euros.

“Keep moving,” urged Elizabeth. “Don’t make eye contact.”

Reaching an intersection, they had to wait for the traffic light to change, and Lucy made sure to glance around, keeping a wary eye on her surroundings. It was then that she saw the three black men, their arms loaded with counterfeit purses, dashing through traffic, with a couple of flics in hot pursuit. “Watch out!” she warned as one of the vendors crashed through the crowd of pedestrians waiting to cross the street. While Lucy and her friends were shocked and alarmed, nobody else seemed at all disturbed by the scene, so she guessed it was a frequent occurrence.

Making a left turn, they followed Sylvie down a grimy side street that ran along a highway exit ramp and that was lined with stall after stall of junky knockoffs, fake Levis, and cheap T-shirts and shoes.

“This is not at all what I expected,” declared Sue. “Where are the antiques? The brocante?”

“Just up here,” said Sylvie, leading them into a covered arcade with a sign identifying it as the Marché Dauphine.

It was chilly in the market, which had a cement floor and metal stairs that reminded Lucy of the stairs leading to the elevated train lines in New York.

“The best antique shops are mostly down here, on the rez-de-chaussée,” explained Sylvie. “Upstairs, on the mezzanine, that’s where you find old posters, books, costume jewelry, the less expensive brocante.”

They soon discovered the shops on the main floor were far beyond their budgets, featuring shabby Louis XV armchairs, fragile sets of Sevres china, gleaming gold vermeil flatware, and shimmering crystal chandeliers.