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and find his brother. But tomorrow morning, Monsieur Gascon, we shall expect you here to complete this great work.” He turned to the foreman. “Would you agree?”
    The foreman shrugged, but nodded.
    “Go,” the foreman said to Thomas, who would have thanked him properly, except that his sister had already fled.

    Seen from a distance, the hill of Montmartre hadn’t changed so much since Roman times. For centuries old vines had grown there, tended by local nuns in the Middle Ages, though the vineyards nowadays had either been built upon, or lapsed into waste ground. But one pleasant change had occurred. A number of wooden windmills had gathered near the summit, their lumbering sails turning in the wind, giving the hill a picturesque appearance.
    Only drawing closer was it clear that Montmartre had become a bit of a mess. Too steep and inconvenient for Baron Haussmann to tame, it was still half rural. But in the places where Montmartre had tried to smarten itself, it seemed to have given up, its crooked streets and steep alleys breaking off unfinished, turning into trackways of wooden huts and cabins scattered, higgledy-piggledy, across the hillside.
    In all this mess, no part was more disreputable than the shantytown just over the hill on its northwestern flank. The Maquis, they called it: the bush, the wilderness, or even skid row. The house in which the Gascons lived was one of the better ones: a simple frame covered with wooden boards and an upstairs balcony that made it look like a shanty version of a Swiss chalet. An outside staircase led to the upper floor that the family occupied.
    “Where have you looked?” Thomas asked, as soon as he got there.
    “Partout.”
Everywhere, said his mother. “The police came.” Her shrug indicated that she had no faith in them. Monsieur Gascon was sitting in the corner. The yoke he put across his shoulders to carry the water buckets lay on the floor beside him. He was staring at the floor in guilty silence. “You should go to work,” his wife said to him quietly.
    “Let them do without their water,” he said defiantly, “until my son is found.” And Thomas guessed his father thought that little Luc was dead.
    “Your aunt gave him a balloon yesterday afternoon, and sent him home,” his mother continued to Thomas, “but he never got here. None of the children at the school have seen him. One boy said he had, but then he changed his mind. If anyone knows anything, they’re not telling.”
    “I’m going out to search,” said Thomas. “What color was the balloon?”
    “Blue,” said his mother.

    Once outside, Thomas paused. Could he find his brother? He told himself he could. There seemed little point in searching the Maquis again. Down the hill, the city outskirts spread northward to the suburb calledSaint-Denis. But so far as Thomas knew, his little brother never went out there. The small free school his mother made him attend, and most of the places Luc knew, lay up the hill. Thomas started to climb.
    The Moulin de la Galette stood on the ridge just above the Maquis. It was one of a pair of windmills owned by an enterprising family who had set up a
guinguette
bar with a little dance floor there. People came out from the city to enjoy some cheap drink and rustic charm, and Luc haunted the place. He’d sing songs for the customers, who’d give him tips.
    The barman was sweeping the floor.
    “The police have been here already,” he said. “Luc never came last night.”
    “He may have had a blue balloon.”
    “No balloon.”
    Thomas went along several streets after that, stopping here and there to ask if anyone remembered a boy with a balloon the day before. Nobody did. It was hard not to feel discouraged, but he pressed on. After half an hour of wandering about like this, he came out onto the great platform of ground overlooking the city where, behind a high wooden fence, they were building the huge basilica of Sacré Coeur.
    Thomas had been seven years old