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stone and a slight release, as though the city is giving way beneath you.
    Where are we going?
    Not even two in the afternoon, and there’s a candle in every window, and the light seems to partake of the same medium as the air and the ground and the water, so that even when your eyes are open, you have the strangest feeling that they’re closed.
    Never mind, my companion knows the way. He takes his bearings not from celestial but from human bodies. Washerwomen, wheelwrights. A ragpicker with a basket and hook. Beldams, in groups of four, gossiping on doorsteps. Vidocq knows where they’ll be before he’s even seen them. Already calling out to them, isn’t he, with the swagger of a stagecoach driver pulling into the courtyard of an inn.
    “Good afternoon, ladies! Saying our rosaries, are we?…Hey, Gervaise, you pile of shit! You still owe me thirty sous on that cock of yours. Never mind, just keep a place for me at next Sunday’s fight, will you? And bring a bird with some heart in him!…Ah, is that the sun I see or Mademoiselle Sophie? Why, you’re better than the sun, it’s true….”
    Even his gait changes as he approaches them. The right foot drags slightly behind him, like an embarrassed child, and the left foot skates through the drifts of mud, and his hands, those great bear claws, tease the air.
    “Oho, it’s Tambour! Haven’t seen you since you went to the bagne . But what are these phials you’re foisting on the public? Herbal panaceas? Why, Tambour, I had no idea you were such a philanthropist—hey now, do any of these potions give a fellow bigger balls? My friend here might want some….”
    They all stand stock-still as he approaches, with the frozen half-smiles of guests at a Tuileries garden party. It comes as a surprise when we turn onto the Rue des Blancs-Manteaux to find a man not just standing but coming toward us, with a turnip sack over his shoulder.
    “Chief,” he says, in the mildest of tones.
    “Allard.”
    They stand there, staring over each other’s shoulders, making scraps of small talk, lofting an oath or two at the weather. And then Allard, without altering his cadence, murmurs:
    “He’s inside.”
    “How long?”
    “Since eleven.”
    Vidocq cuts his eyes north. “Woman, too?”
    “Whole family.”
    “Give.”
    Allard swings the turnip bag off his shoulder. Before I can protest, Vidocq stuffs it into my arms.
    “Don’t jiggle it, Doctor, if you’d be so kind.”
    Motioning me to follow, he stops in front of a poulterer’s window, where he makes a show of interest in a Norman goose. Then, without a word, he draws me inside the adjoining building. The door closes after us, he puts a finger to his lips, he points… up .
    But who would have guessed up would mean five floors? With a heavy bundle in your arms? By the time we reach the top, I’m rubbing my shiny forehead on the turnip bag, and Vidocq’s belly is swelling to twice its normal stoutness—all the more so because he’s trying to still the sound of his own breathing. A minute passes, the belly contracts…Vidocq puts his knuckles to the door and raps, lightly, three times.
    “Who is it?”
    “Friends.”
    From inside, a scatter and a scuffle. Moments later, the door opens on a young woman—maybe not young at all—skinny as a limpet with a cat-nose and vole-eyes.
    “Ah!” cries Vidocq. “La belle Jeanne-Victoire!”
    “Monsieur Eugène,” she says, even as glass.
    “I’m looking for Poulain, my sweet.”
    “Not at home, to be sure.”
    “Ahhh.” His eyes execute a quick sweep of the room. “Then we’ll just wait for him, if you don’t mind.”
    She pauses to consider, but he’s already stepped around her, and the only thing left to consider is me: hat in hand, smiling with reflexive courtesy, clutching that mysterious package to my breast.
    “I don’t believe you’ve met,” Vidocq calls back.
    It is a strange feature of Parisian apartments: The closer they get to Heaven, the more hellish