I had no notion of where precisely this Café de la Cloche was to be found. I passed beneath the archway and looked left and then right down the colonnade. Spying the puppet theatre, I turned in that direction and marched hastily past the windows of fan-makers and booksellers, purveyors of trinkets and ices, some of them shuttered fast at midday. It was then that I glimpsed what appeared to be a sign painted with a large church bell, half hidden behind a column. I raced to the entry, my feet fairly tripping over themselves as I did so. It was only when I stood before this hostelry that I understood the porter’s puzzled expression. This was a dingy, tired place, and certainly not one of the fashionable establishments to which ladies repaired. I stepped cautiously across the threshold and surveyed the interior. Here and there were arranged a collection of faded green chairs and tables and painted walls whose golden griffins and swags of flowers had been turned a dull yellow from pipe smoke. But for a knot of three thin-faced men engrossed in reading a single newspaper, the café was deserted. I approached a waiter, whose eyes had been upon me from the moment I had entered, and enquired of a Monsieur Mariot, or his associate, a Monsieur DuLac. He ran his fingers beneath his brown frizzed wig as if trying to recall their faces.

‘Well, they are not here today, mademoiselle,’ he replied, screwing up his face as if I were mad to have ventured out on such an errand. ‘You might return tomorrow or upon any following afternoon, though you are unlikely to find them here before dinner.’

I nodded at him. I cannot say that I believed I would have found them there upon my first attempt, but I had hoped.

‘Might I leave a letter for Monsieur Mariot here?’ I begged. The waiter smirked and produced paper and a pen before promptly demanding two sous for it. Then he stood over me, reading across my shoulder as I scrawled my note. In it, I explained that I wished to make his acquaintance and that of Monsieur DuLac, and enquired when they next proposed to meet at the café. I apologized that, for reasons I could not reveal, I was unable to receive them at my lodgings and instructed him to leave his reply for me at the café. Then, with an ounce of daring, I signed my name in a manner I had not for some time, as Lady Allenham.

I know not if the meddlesome creature behind me was capable of reading so much as a word, but he took my folded sheet from me with an air of suspicion, while promising to deliver it to the gentleman in question. I could do no more than wait.