“It’s old writing.”

“So what?”

Just then La Grande Sauterelle and the cleaning woman came over to the counter. Without raising his voice, the man tried to explain: “I wanted to ask for information about the source of the text . . .”

“I’m not an expert on old texts,” said the young man curtly.

He handed back the postcard with a shrug and returned to his reading. It was a Superman comic.

La Grande Sauterelle asked, “Do you know if the curator’s in his office?”

“Who?” asked the young man without looking up.

“The director of the museum.”

“He’s away.”

The cleaning woman tried to look at the card over Jack’s shoulder. She was short and plump, and the colour of her skin, as well as her features, showed that she was an Indian.

“May I look?” she asked.

He said nothing, so she wiped her fingers on her white smock and took the card from his hands.

“It looks to me exactly like Jacques Cartier’s handwriting,” she said.

There was a long moment’s silence. When she realized that no one had anything to say, the woman laid the postcard on the counter and returned to the bucket of water she had left in the middle of the lobby.

“Jacques Cartier’s handwriting? Why do you say that?” asked the man, who had followed her step by step.

“It’s simple,” she said. “Your old text is exactly the same as the one in the main hall, and I couldn’t be wrong about it because every day when I do the cleaning I have to dust the two placards.”

“Two placards? So there are two texts?”

“Not at all. It’s the same text on both placards, except that on one it’s written in old writing like yours and on the other in . . . ordinary writing.”

“Would you be so kind as to show us?” he asked briskly.

“Certainly. Come this way, but watch your step.”

Jack and the girl followed the cleaning woman into the main hall. They walked along a sort of corridor marked off by parallel cables that snaked past a variety of objects that were scattered on the floor, hung on the wall or exhibited in glass cases: tools, articles of clothing, weapons, transport vehicles, navigational instruments, cards and posters, all arranged in chronological order, from the early days of America to the present time.

At the back of the main hall the cleaning woman stopped in front of two huge posters. She took a cloth from her pocket and automatically dusted them.

“Here it is,” she said straightforwardly. They saw at once that the text on the poster on the left was the same as that on the postcard, and they immediately turned to thank the woman, but she had already gone.

The right-hand poster read: “Excerpt from the original account of Jacques Cartier’s first voyage.” And the text, in block letters, was as follows:

On the twenty-fourth day of the said month, we had a cross made thirty feet high, which was put together in the presence of a number of the Indians on the point at the entrance to this harbour, under the cross-bar of which we fixed a shield with three fleur-de-lys in relief, and above it a wooden board, engraved in large Gothic characters, where was written long live the King of France. We erected this cross on the point in their presence and they watched it being put together and set up. And when it had been raised in the air, we all knelt down with our hands joined, worshipping it before them; and made signs to them, looking up and pointing towards heaven, that by means of this we had our redemption, at which they showed many marks of admiration, at the same time turning and looking at the cross.