They had breakfast in the cafeteria.

“Do we visit it, yes or no?” asked La Grande Sauterelle.

“What?” said Jack.

“The city of Al Capone,” she said. (She pronounced it Al Caponé.) “The city of Eliot Ness, of prohibition, of gangsters in black limousines, of bursts of submachinegun fire that shatter the windows in bars and poker dens.”

“Why do you say Caponé?”

“That’s my Italian accent. How do you pronounce it?”

“Capoo-ooo-ooon!”

“That sounds like a lugubrious wind!”

“You’re very comical this morning,” he said. “And your tennis hat is absolutely irresistible.”

“Thank you,” she said. “I feel terrific. If you want to get back on the road to St. Louis right away, I’m your man!”

“Aren’t there any little stops you want to make?”

“Not one.”

“Not even the top of the Sears Tower?”

“Not even! You?”

“Hmm!” he said.

He gave a piece of bacon to the cat, who was on his lap.

The girl guessed, “I know, you’re the one who wants to make a little detour . . .”

“Yes,” he said. “When I woke up at noon I remembered something: when my brother first left for the States, he used to send letters or postcards, and one day in a postcard from Chicago, he mentioned a painting by Renoir — I think it was a woman with a red hat and lots of flowers — and he said he’d thought about me because I like Renoir so much. He preferred Van Gogh because of the strength of . . . But he said that if I was ever in Chicago . . .”

“It must be at the Art Institute,” said the girl, well informed as always.

“We won’t stay long,” said the man as he drained his cup of coffee. “Just in and out.”

IT WAS LATE MAY and the air was soft and warm; Michigan Avenue, animated, broad and opulent with its department stores, restaurants and art galleries, sloped gently down to the Chicago River, the skyscrapers and the Art Institute, which was on the left, on the other side of the bridge.

They asked a guard to show them where the French Impressionists were, and after climbing a staircase they found a gallery devoted entirely to Renoir. Jack spotted the woman in the red hat right away, but first he went around the room, looking at the other pictures, then he went and sat on a bench in front of the painting Théo had told him about.

It showed a young woman sitting on a terrace with a little girl. The painting was entitled On the Terrace, 1881. Behind the woman was an iron railing covered with flowering shrubs and then a row of trees through which one could catch a glimpse of a river, some people in a small boat and, in the distance, houses and hills. The little girl wore a white dress and a flowered hat, and her hands were resting on the rim of a basket of fruit that was set on the table. The woman seemed very young; she wore a black dress and a hat of an incredibly bright red; the expression on her face was infinitely gentle, and that gentleness blended with the light that pervaded the entire painting.