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“Well then, monsieur,” the Queen returned. “Let it be an example to you; burn this note and you will have done a charitable deed.”

“You’re kidding, Austrian woman,” said Agricola. “Burn a piece of paper that’ll help us catch a whole coven of aristocrats, maybe? Good grief, no! That’d be too silly for words.”

“Yes, burn it,” said Mother Tison, “it might compromise my daughter.”

“I think it might—your daughter and all the rest of them,” said Agricola, ripping out of Maurice’s hands the note Maurice would gladly have burned if only he’d been on his own. Ten minutes later, the note was placed on the desk of the members of the Commune. There it was opened instantly and commented upon from every possible angle.

“ ‘In the Orient, a friend still keeps watch,’ ” someone read aloud. “What the hell does that mean?”

“Hell!” answered a geographer. “In the Orient—Lorient, that much is clear: Lorient1 is a small town in Brittany, on the coast between Vannes and Quimper. Good grief! We should burn the town down if it’s true they’re harboring aristocrats that are still keeping watch over the Austrian woman.”

“It’s all the more dangerous,” someone else piped up, “since Lorient is a seaport, so they could establish intelligence with the English.”

“I propose,” said a third, “we send a commission to Lorient and set up an inquiry there.”

Maurice had been informed of the deliberations.

“I very much doubt,” he said to himself, “Lorient can be the Orient in question; we’re not talking about a place in Brittany, that’s for sure.”

The very next day the Queen, who, as we have said, no longer went down to the gardens so as not to have to pass the room her husband had been locked up in, asked to go up to the top of the tower to get a little fresh air with her daughter and Madame Elisabeth. The request was instantly granted. But unbeknownst to the ladies, Maurice went up too beforehand and, hiding behind a kind of compact sentry box housed at the top of the stairs, awaited the outcome of the note of the day before.

At first, the Queen sauntered casually about with her daughter and Madame Elisabeth, then she stood still while the two princesses continued to circle the tower platform. She turned to the east and looked intently at a nearby house in that direction, at whose windows several figures appeared. One of these figures was holding a white handkerchief.

Maurice meanwhile pulled a lorgnette from his pocket, and while he was adjusting it the Queen clearly waved her hand, as though to invite the curious souls at the window of the house to get back inside. But not before Maurice noticed the head of a man with blond hair and a pale complexion whose low bow had been respectful to the point of humility.

Behind this young man, for the curious fellow looked as if he was no more than twenty-five or twenty-six years old, a woman was half hidden. Maurice trained his lorgnette on her and, feeling he’d recognized Geneviève, gave himself away with a sudden jerk. Immediately the woman, who herself held a lorgnette in her hands, jumped back, dragging the young man with her. Was it really Geneviève? Did she in turn recognize Maurice? Or did the strange couple withdraw simply at the Queen’s invitation?

Maurice waited a while, scarcely breathing, to see whether the man and the woman would reappear. But the window remained deserted; so he counseled his colleague Agricola to show the greatest possible vigilance and rushed back downstairs and out to the corner of the rue Porte-Foin, to lie in wait for the curious couple in the house to come out. But he waited in vain, for no one came.

Unable to resist the suspicion that had been gnawing at his heart from the moment the Tison girl’s companion had deliberately kept herself covered up and mute, Maurice wended his way to the old rue Saint-Jacques, his mind in a turmoil of doubt.

When he entered the house, Geneviève was sitting in a white dressing gown by a big pot of jasmine, where she was in the habit of being served lunch. She gave Maurice the usual warm welcome