There was a brief pause. Then Erasmus said: “Long have I awaited your call, Antoine. I thought not that you would come from Muscovy, as a Gaul I saw you . . .”

“You saw?” I asked, confused.

“It is known to you that I am a Prophet,” Erasmus told me. “Come you to me—I shall not seek to thwart fate, but shall receive you.”

“Thank you very much,” I said, rather taken aback by such frank benevolence.

“Nonsense is it to thank me, Antoine. The address is known to you. Take a cab and come without delay.”

Monsieur Erasme de Arvin, retired Prophet of the Day Watch and connoisseur of the intimate life of plants, lived beside a park. Properly speaking, the hotel where I was staying was also located beside a park, but there’s a big difference between Hyde Park and Regent’s Park. They may both belong to the Queen, but the former is noisier and simpler, more popular—as in “of the people.” You can find absolutely anything close by—from hugely expensive mansions and luxurious shops (that’s on the Thames side) to cheap hotels and ethnic neighborhoods inhabited by Chinese, Albanians, and Russians (that’s on the railway-station side, where that most likeable of English immigrants, Paddington Bear, once arrived).

Regent’s Park, however, is surrounded by expensive houses standing on land that also belongs to the Queen—and they can’t be bought, only rented, even though it may be for a hundred or two hundred years, so none of the residents in these luxurious mansions and apartments that cost millions can truly say “my home is my castle.” But that didn’t seem to bother anyone very much—at any rate, as I walked along the side of the park I spotted a parked Bentley with a number plate that read ARMANI and a couple of people with faces that I’d seen in films, or on the front pages of newspapers.

Well, anyway, if you’ve lived in this world for three hundred years and have still not accumulated enough money to settle anywhere you fancy—then you’re a total idiot. Of course, there are people like that to be found even among Prophets, but Erasmus was clearly not one of them. So of course he could afford a little mansion close to Regent’s Park.

However, the reality exceeded all my expectations.