Whatever the cause, one thing was clear to Hercule Le Sourd: in the last few years, King Louis XIV had run out of luck.

It wasn’t only the grim cost of his wars. Everything had gone wrong. The harvests had failed—the surest sign of divine displeasure. Disease and famine had struck the countryside. And now his heirs had started dying. The dauphin, heir to France. The dauphin’s son. The dauphin’s elder grandson. Was there a curse on the family? One had to wonder. And now the king was old, and his health was beginning to fail, and his heir was his younger great-grandson, a little boy of five.

After all of King Louis XIV’s dynastic efforts, the kingdom of France would shortly be back where it was before: financially ruined, and with a helpless child upon the throne.

The sun was being extinguished. The darkness was closing in.

It was almost the end of August when the strange thing occurred. Hercule Le Sourd had asked his grandson to take him to a different place that day: the stately square of the Place Royale in the Marais quarter.

When they got there, he directed his grandson to a particular spot, and then got out and stretched his legs a bit.

“Why do you choose this place to stop?” his grandson inquired.

“Something wrong with it?”

“No.”

“Then mind your own business,” said his grandfather.

What had happened to that strange woman? he wondered. Probably dead by now. And no doubt I’ll be following her soon myself, he thought. And it occurred to him that in every corner of Paris there must be places where people had made illicit love—people who were long since turned to skeletons and dust. And if they were all to be resurrected in the body at the same time and in the act of love, what a strange panting, and moaning, and grinding of bones there would be. And in the warm, thick air of that August afternoon, it seemed to him that just for a moment, he could sense all those vanished bodies like spirits all around him, but as spirits with substance, however light. Was it possible that memories, and souls, could take a vaporous form and float about? If they could do it anywhere, it would surely be in the sultry warmth of the intimate, arcaded brick-and-stone enclosure, on a silent August afternoon.

It had not happened only once. The lady had come back for him the next day, and the one after that. Three times they had made the journey from the Pont Neuf to the Place Royale. Three times they had made passionate love. He had been young then, and vigorous.