That Saturday night, around nine o’clock, Jack was lying on the bed. They had returned from a walk along rue Saint-Jean, rue d’Auteuil and the Plains of Abraham, and they had come back to the apartment by way of the wooden staircase that descended to the terrace in stages, hugging the walls of the Citadel and the cliff at Cap Diamant; there was an impressive view of the river from the top of that staircase. The man suddenly got up and began searching through his bookcase. He muttered at the disorder that prevented him from finding the book he was looking for.

“What sort of book?” asked La Grande Sauterelle, who was sitting in her favourite corner of the window seat.

“A blue one,” said Jack.

The bookcase was rather narrow, because the room was so cramped, but it went up to the ceiling. Planted in front of the shelves with his hands on his hips, he looked for the book.

“What’s the title?” asked the girl.

“The Exploration of the American Continent or something like that,” he replied, climbing up on a chair. “If I remember correctly, it should be somewhere near the top. I really ought to tidy up my books.”

The girl got up.

“The one by Brouillette?” she asked.

“Do you know it?”

“Of course. I read it to see what he said about the Indians. I’ve read quite a lot about the Indians.”

“I can’t lay my hands on it.”

“Here it is,” said the girl.

She took a book from the bottom shelf and showed it to him.

“It’s not Exploration, it’s The Penetration of the American Continent by the French Canadians.”

“You’re right. So it is!”

“And it’s not blue,” she said. “It’s brick red.”

“I should be brick red,” said the man, getting down from his chair. “Now I’m so embarrassed I can’t even remember why I wanted to reread it.”

“I seem to remember there’s a section about St. Louis . . . Just a minute.”

She looked at the table of contents, turned a few pages, then read aloud:

“Wherever trading was carried out, we find traces of French Canadians, pure blooded at the beginning of the period, later of mixed blood . . . We shall follow the traders from their principal centres of influence, which were in turn: Detroit, Michilimackinac, Grand-Portage (later Fort William) and St. Louis.”

“Thank you,” said Jack. “That’s exactly the section I was looking for. I mean, I’d forgotten it, but it was still somewhere in my unconscious and I was trying to find it again.”

La Grande Sauterelle went back to her favourite corner. She was reading a book by Gabrielle Roy, The Fragile Lights of Earth.

“Of course that doesn’t explain why Théo was going to St. Louis,” she said, before she returned to her book.

“No, it doesn’t.”

“All it means is that St. Louis was a trading post.”

A moment later she continued, “But everybody knows that the trading posts were located along waterways . . . so they weren’t used just for the fur trade: they were also starting points for all sorts of expeditions.”