“I’ll go for a walk with you tomorrow,” he told her. “Bring my coat.”

The next afternoon they went to the garden. He used a cane but still had to lean on her when there was a stair. He hadn’t been outside in over a year, but he wished to speak to her privately. He told her that he had made his money in diamonds, smuggled to France in his stomach.

“That’s impossible,” Madeleine remembered saying. She knew a thing or two about stomachaches. Swallowing things that were hard, like rocks, was not humanly possible. Even too many cakes eaten too quickly could make you sick. “They’d have to cut you open to get them and you’d be dead.”

“You know very little,” her grandfather told her. “Things go into your body and things go out.”

That sounded distressing, but Madeleine thought it over.

There was a frog in a garden bed near a clutch of blue bellflowers. Monsieur Salomon reached down and caught it. Before Madeleine could blink he swallowed it whole.

Madeleine nearly fell down.

“You can train yourself to eat almost anything if you must,” her grandfather said to the shocked little girl. She had never been as surprised in all her life, but there was more to come. Her grandfather proceeded to burp up the frog, whole and alive and equally stunned. He laughed, then plopped the creature back into the dirt.

He did his best to explain her parents’ deaths. He told her that love was everlasting and that her mother was now with the angels. Her father, who was so stern and loved his horses more than anything, was there with her. This should have brought Madeleine some peace of mind, but it didn’t.

Madeleine’s grandfather told her a list of reasons not to be a Jew. Though he didn’t care for her father’s family, he understood why they had converted. Whatever happened, he told her, people would blame their kind, they would say Jews had secret societies, ran the world, were thieves, wanted to take their houses from them, were the reason they led miserable lives. That was why he had at last converted as well, for the sake of his children. Both Madeleine and her mother had been born Catholic, to ensure that they would not be persecuted. Now her grandfather wanted to see how good a Catholic she was. He wondered if she would recite the Lord’s Prayer, and she was proud to do as he asked.

Our Father, Who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven.

After he praised her, her grandfather surprised her by reciting a prayer in a strange language.

Modeh ani l’fanecha, melech chai v’kayam schehechezarta bi nishmati b’chemla raba emunatecha.