Downstairs the porter confessed he had already barred their way. That sort, he called them. I ordered the women admitted, and escorted to my rooms, where the tough old creature whose cheeks were like a ruined apple fell upon me in oniony gratitude. The young beauty was more removed and steely in her manner. She would not weep or supplicate, and it was in that spirit she now stood before the jail in Centre Street, where, as a bell was striking ten o'clock, the smaller prison door swung in, and from the shadow emerged the comic novelist and his big round balding head.

Bravo, etc.

A moment later M. Perroquet, slightly bowed, seemingly fuddled and confused by the complicated nature of his welcome, stepped into the light.

Then came a great wild female howl that stood my hair up and caught my breath. Mademoiselle charged, blue skirts flying, with such acceleration she almost knocked her hero back inside the prison walls. They stumbled, caught at each other. Reaching down he held her waist, or worse. Reaching up, she grasped his head like a pumpkin she might squash and drew him down to kiss him on his prison mouth. Tsk or not tsk? I did not know what I thought. I had not liked the fellow. I had been forced to wait like a courtier to beg his signature, but then he came to fight by my side in honor bound. Tsk or not tsk? He came toward us, his hand very frankly around his woman's waist. He was tall and springy in his step. He was older than he seemed. Both his left ear and his nose had been remodeled somewhere along the way, in a war perhaps, or in a tavern brawl, and yet it gave the man a peculiar hawkish distinction. He was a servant of the famous Monsieur, with whom he shared a certain hardness. He was wiry. His skin was much used, as if he were a farmer or a botanist adventurer, but there was a clear lucid quality in his frank green eyes which showed a sharp intelligence.

"Thank you," he said to me.

He bowed his head a little, with respect or irony I really could not say. I noticed he was a great deal taller than I had imagined.

I shook his hand, surprised to discover I was so happy to see him free.

"It is Mr. Peek you should thank," I said.

He looked to Peek, whom he knew by sight of course, having traveled with him on the boat. He nodded, rather curtly I thought, but then I noted that his cheek was bruised, so what gratitude did he owe to anyone for his incarceration?

"I cannot leave by myself," he said.

My English was not perfect. I thought: Naturally he wishes to make love to her.

"Of course," I cried. "You have your freedom. It should never have been taken from you."

"Monsieur," he said in that perfect aristocratic French he would mimic to disturb me, "there is an innocent boy in great danger. He has done no wrong. He will be murdered if he is not released."

But what could I do? I was not the American commissioner. I had already pushed diplomacy to its limits with my requests.

"No, monsieur," I said, regretting my smile, which must have made me look foolish and weak. "I have not the power to empty prisons."

"Then I return."

Don't threaten me, I thought, but before anyone could hinder him, he had rushed back into prison and his woman was in a great flood of tears, accusing me of God knows what, her patois was beyond the pale.

Then two women at me. The language. All the pompous officials in great consternation. Two warders, big pale creatures, came out into the light, shrugging their meaty shoulders and holding their palms upward.

O'Hara consulted his watch again. I wondered if it was his property.

The novelist scurried back inside the door of the Tombs, where he was intercepted it seemed, for his very comfortable backside remained on display to the crowd, as if he were a low comic in the rue du Temple. Peek took me firmly by the arm and moved me down the street, deeper into shadow.

From that distance I observed a general ruckus, the departure of certain governors, the arrival of some councillors, O'Hara's discussion with the paramour, O'Hara suffering a scratch from cheek to nose. I saw the distinguished councillors make their way through the traffic to stand in front of the pawnshop. Peek and I were now at the southern corner of the prison, where I assured him that the Government of France would not wish him to act in this case.

"My dear Jesus," said he, a shocking expression from those lips.

The boy prisoner was brought out of the Tombs, although "boy" does nothing to conjure the creature that we observed, a great hulking lad of fifteen with a long chin, a low forehead, and the most awful way of standing as if he were being beaten with a rod. He was a strong fellow, yet his shoulders were rounded, his hands brought so close together he might have been in chains. His eyes and mouth were queerly small, and he stared out at the passing scene as Mr. Perroquet, placing his hand on the creature's shoulder, spoke urgently into his ear.

"This-" said Mr. Peek but he was interrupted by a clerk of the court, who explained to us that the boy's name was Joshua Boulton and he was required as a witness in a trial for murder. The court would be satisfied to give him to the surety of any of these gentlemen if they would feed him until the murderer was hanged.

While Mr. Peek was silently considering this offer, Monsieur Perroquet, his hair blazing in the sun, his hand still on the witness's shoulder, walked him to where the beauty stood. Those who heard them speak could not understand the language, but everyone saw that the woman gave the "boy" some coins and put her lips to his cheek.

As the boy turned, I thought, He is being sent to make his plea. Then he seemed to imagine he had been ordered to talk to the gentlemen outside the pawnshop.

I called, "No, come here."

He started, stared in my direction, made a strange hop, and fled-the most ungainly rush, all crunched shoulders, pigeon toes, ducking, darting in front of a brewery dray, into an alley no wider than a knife. And he was gone, like a cockroach in the narrow dark.

In response to this, the fragrant Mademoiselle Mathilde Christian kissed me on the cheek. And Mr. Peek proposed a little ride.

EVEN INSIDE PEEK'S CARRIAGE, among the manly odors of leather and tobacco, the departed beauty remained in my mind's eye just as the light fragrance of her kiss stayed on my skin. Why this was so familiar, I did not know. Was it the drape of her light dress, with its very clear suggestion of the naked form? Or was it the sturdy well-formed calves, the little feet?

You see already where the "memory" came from-Marianne, the wanton warrior of Delacroix, her pagan breasts bare to the sky, the musket and bayonet in her hand. I had seen her in that bloodthirsty painting at its vernissage. And the runaway devil with a pistol and those piles of broken bodies, which made a mound, a plinth, a pulpit for the Revolution.

As Peek's carriage macerated the fresh green grass which grew ever hopeful between the cracks of cobbles, the banker placed his hand on my knee and declared himself well pleased that we had released my cosignatory. I was shocked he would think this entire performance had been undertaken for so base a purpose.

Certainly I could not say a word about Marianne. Nor was it proper for me to express my low opinion of a society in which money was all that might guarantee an innocent man justice.

This was not the better future I had sought with such faint heart. It was certainly not the system of American law as it had previously been laid out for me like precious silver at our municipal luncheons. Only the single egg spot on the banker's chin gave the clue that all was not as it should be at this interim.

My thoughts regarding Marianne, touching as they did both politics and philosophy, did not seem appropriate for the occasion. Yet I could not refrain from some observations on the subject of the runaway boy, for there was something vile about the creature's very form, as if his limbs, being bound from birth, had shaped him as criminal. One needed only to glimpse him lurch and slither into that narrow lightless lane to know he would return to the nest of contagion unreformed and further spread the strain of criminality through the veins and arteries of his society.