‘We shall find him together, ma chère soeur,’ said she in a gentle voice. ‘And what pleasure it will give me to see you reunited.’

Chapter 18

‘DO YOU RECKON that this stranger might have gone by the name of Mr Allen?’ pressed my friend, her expression bright with intrigue. ‘Do you think it possible that your lover has come to Paris in support of the Revolution? Why, so many have, it is not implausible to consider . . .’ she conjectured as we rounded a fountain at the centre of the gardens. ‘Mr Paine is an Englishman and he is a great supporter of our Revolution. Is Monsieur Allenham a friend of Thomas Paine?’ She paused, but only for a fleeting instant. ‘Perhaps he has taken another name. Perhaps he wishes to throw off the yoke of his noble ancestors . . . he wishes to appear as an American . . . but how curious that is, Henriette. Has Monsieur Allenham visited America?’ La Buffon continued, allowing every thought that danced through her brain to take flight from her tongue. Indeed, I had not seen her so animated since our return to Paris. In presenting her with my dilemma, I had handed her the very distraction from her troubles for which she most yearned. ‘You are like Monsieur Rousseau’s Julie,’ she exclaimed, ‘and we must find your Saint-Preux and return him to you!’

Day upon day, this endeavour came to consume her, displacing all other cares. She spoke no more of her fears of counter-revolution, of assassins among Orléans’s servants or of arsenic dropped into her wine. Rather she chose to fashion herself into my scrupulous inquisitor. She demanded details of Allenham’s family and connections, of all his passions and interests, about Herberton, about his income, about his education, tutors and his manner of life. She enquired as to his taste in theatre and in books and asked which amongst them were most favoured. She listened with rapt attention to each answer and anecdote, and when I at last revealed to her the miniature portrait I had painted of him, she sighed, ‘Ah, ma petite, we must find him!’

It was she who insisted we undertake daily excursions through the arcades to the Café de la Cloche. We set out each afternoon, at an hour when the fashionable set had made their retreat from the colonnades. The crowds mainly comprised the working sort: petty merchants, clerks and grisettes taking coffee and wine and listening to the shouted arguments of men in tricolour sashes.