“It’s a fine text and I’m glad to have read it,” said Jack, “but I don’t know if we’re much further ahead.”

“I think we’ve made some progress,” said La Grande Sauterelle. “Now we have to think a little. Let’s go outside for a walk.”

They reread Jacques Cartier’s text, then slowly left the main hall, stopping here and there to glance at the objects in the exhibition. They paid special attention to a very large and beautiful map of North America on which one could see the vast territory that belonged to France in the mid-eighteenth century, a territory that extended from the Arctic to the Gulf of Mexico and west as far as the Rocky Mountains: it was an astonishing and very moving sight. But there was also an equally impressive map that depicted North America before the arrival of the whites; the map was strewn with the names of Indian tribes, names the man knew — Cree, Montagnais, Iroquois, Sioux, Cheyenne, Comanche, Apache — but also a large number of names he’d never heard of in his life: Chastacosta, Shuman, Miluk, Waco, Karankawan, Timucuas, Potanos, Yuchi, Coahuitlecan, Pascagoula, Tillamook, Maidu, Possepatuck, Alsea, Chawashas, Susquehanna, Calusa.

The girl stood for a long time in front of the second map. Her eyes were wet and shining, and Jack realized it was best to leave her alone for a moment. He returned to the lobby. The cleaning woman had nearly finished washing the floor. The man shook her hand and thanked her for the information.

“If you want to rest,” she said, “you can go and sit in the library. It’s the best place to get some peace and there’re all sorts of books that talk about Jacques Cartier, if that’s what interests you.”

“Thanks again, chère Madame,” he said. “It’s not often people call me that,” she said with a broad smile. “I’m going to get some air, then I’ll come back and see the library.”

LA GRANDE SAUTERELLE had brought the cat and they walked in silence to the edge of the strip of land that jutted out into the bay.

“Put yourself in Théo’s place,” she said.

They were in a birch wood, the man’s favourite tree. The girl went on. “You come and visit the museum and then, for some reason or other, you get an urge to send a postcard with that account by Jacques Cartier you’ve just read in the main hall as the message. So what do you do?”

“I buy a postcard at the counter,” he said.

“Right. And then?”

“Then I take the text to a printer and ask him to reproduce it on the postcard, but there’s one hitch . . .”

“Obviously you can’t bring him the poster from the main hall.”

“Obviously.”

“So.”

He shrugged.

“It’s simple,” she said. “You go to the library.”

“Why?”

“To get the book the text is taken from. And when you find it you make a photocopy and you take that to the printer.”