“Did you know that this chapel was dedicated to Saint-Gilles?” As she looked uncertain, he continued. “Saint-Gilles, my child, is the patron saint of cripples. You have chosen well to pray here.”

He turned back to the de Cygnes, and they moved a few feet away.

“Did you hear?” he murmured to them. “The child was passing, and did not know that this is the chapel of Saint-Gilles, nor that he is the patron saint of cripples. Voilà. Even in such times as these, the providence of God is manifested. Perhaps the saint himself summoned this child to his church.” But now he turned to the matter in hand. “Oh, my dears,” Father Pierre began, “what terrible news I must share with you.”

Claudie listened carefully. The priest was very upset. Sixteen women from a Carmelite religious house had just been executed today, near the Faubourg Saint-Antoine. They had refused to obey the Clergy Law. They had declared that they would sooner be martyred for the faith.

“They went to the guillotine chanting,” the old priest declared. “They were martyred every one.”

“Martyrs indeed,” said the man, and the young lady agreed with him. And they both said it was a disgrace, and that it should not have been done.

Then they asked the priest to come home with them for a little while. The lady said the old man needed a hot drink. “Laced with brandy,” said the young man.

Claudie went back to where her mother was waiting, and told her exactly what she had heard.

“Follow them, Claudie,” said her mother. “I’ll keep a little way behind you. Let’s find out where they live.”

Following them was easy. The old priest couldn’t walk very fast. The place they went into was a mansion with a courtyard in front of it, in the Saint-Germain quarter. A regular aristocrat’s palace, her mother said.

After that, it had taken only a few inquiries along the street to discover who lived in the mansion. A tavern keeper said that the family owned a château in the Loire Valley, down in the west.

“That is interesting,” her mother said. “You go home now,” she told Claudie. “I’ll be back later.”

The widow Le Sourd walked swiftly. She had not far to go. Back to the Pont Neuf, across to the Right Bank, then northward up to the rue Saint-Honoré. For that was where the man she sought was living.

The house that the widow Le Sourd was seeking belonged to Monsieur Duplay the cabinetmaker. But it was not Maurice Duplay that the widow sought. It was his longtime lodger. As she had hoped, he was at home.