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“Right,” said the officer. “That’s you taken care of, but what about the citizeness.…”

“Go on: the citizeness?”

“Who is she?”

“She is … my wife’s sister.”

The officer let them pass.

“So, you are married, monsieur?” the stranger murmured.

“No, madame, why do you ask?”

“Because,” she laughed, “it would have been easier to say I was your wife.”

“Madame,” Maurice replied solemnly, “the word wife is a sacred title, one that should not be used lightly. I do not have the honor of knowing you.”

It was the beautiful stranger’s turn to feel a pang in the region of the heart; she said no more. By now, they were halfway across the pont-Marie. The young woman picked up the pace noticeably the closer they got to the end of the run. They zipped across the pont de la Tournelle1 in a flash.

“Here we are in your neighborhood, I presume,” Maurice said as he stepped onto the quai Saint-Bernard.

“Yes, citizen. But it is precisely here that I most need your help.”

“Really, madame, you don’t want me to be indiscreet but at the same time you’re doing everything you can to excite my curiosity. That’s not nice. Let’s have a little trust; surely I’ve earned it. Won’t you do me the honor of telling me to whom I am speaking?”

“You are speaking, monsieur, to a woman whom you have saved from the greatest danger she has ever experienced. One who will be grateful to you for the rest of her life.”

“I’d settle for less, madame. Won’t you be a little less grateful and a little more forthcoming and tell me your name?”

“I can’t.”

“Yet you’d have told the first police officer you met if we’d taken you to the station.”

“No, never!” cried the stranger.

“But then you’d have been put in jail.”

“I was ready for anything.”

“But these days, jail …”

“Means the guillotine, I know.”

“And you would have preferred the guillotine?”

“To betrayal … To say my name would have meant betrayal!”

“As I was saying, you’re making me play a funny part for a republican!”

“You are playing the part of a man with a true heart. You find a poor woman being threatened but you don’t turn your back on her even though she’s a working-class girl, since she may easily be threatened again. So you snatch her from the jaws of death and bring her home to the poor slums where she lives. That’s all.”

“Yes, you’re right; at least, that’s what it looks like. I myself might have believed that story if I hadn’t seen you, if you hadn’t spoken to me. But your beauty, the way you speak, show you to be a woman of distinction, the absolute opposite of your getup and this slum. All of which proves to me that your little late-night foray is covering up some mystery. You don’t say anything.… Well, don’t say anything. Do we still have far to go, madame?”

At that point, they were entering the rue des Fossés-Saint-Victor.

“You see that small blackened building?” the mystery woman asked

Maurice, pointing to a house just visible beyond the walls of the Jardin des Plantes. “When we get there, you will leave me.”

“As you like, madame. Your wish is my command.”

“Are you annoyed with me?”

“Me? Not in the slightest. Besides, what does it matter to you?”

“It matters a lot to me, for I have one more favor to ask you.”

“Which is?”

“I want us to say good-bye … like proper friends.”

“Proper friends! Oh! You do me too great an honor, madame. Funny sort of friend who doesn’t know his friend’s name and from whom his friend conceals her address, no doubt dreading she’ll see him again if she gives it to him.”

The woman bowed her head and did not reply.

“As for that other business, madame,” Maurice continued, “if I stumbled across your secret, you must not hold that against me. It was not my intention.”

“Here we are, monsieur,” said the stranger.

They were opposite the old rue Saint-Jacques, which was lined by tall black houses and pockmarked by dark alleys and lanes where factories and tanneries stood, for the Bièvre River2 runs close by.

“Here?” said Maurice. “You’re joking! This is where you live?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t believe it!”

“Yet there you have it. Adieu,