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and stepped out into the street.
    Maurice’s studio, as well as Mab’s own rooms, were located on the fringes of Saint-Germain-des-Pres, the district between the church of Saint Germain—the scene of frightful massacres during the Terror—and the Seine. It was an area much favored by artists, containing as it did both the Ècole des Beaux-Arts and the Institut. The streets were narrow, dark, and dusty; street cleaning was left to the weather, and this hot, dry summer had seen little rain. The streets were also very crowded, with wheelbarrows and carts, vendors of fruit and vegetables, fish and flowers. Water carriers rattled the handles of their buckets. Clothes dealers sought to sell their wares, while glaziers and chimney boys begged to ply their trades. In the distance, a barrel organ played.
    The Duc made no demur. Could he be familiar with such plebeian scenes? No, he would be accustomed to military reviews in the park, to promenading in the Luxembourg Gardens in moonlight, or attending religious plays given in the catacombs beneath the city. Mab would wager he’d made few forays into such teeming, vulgar streets as these. A little merry-faced cocotte passed by them, then turned with a twirl of ruffles and a display of neat ankles to smile at the Duc. He returned her smile and then leapt back to dodge a passing cart. His ankle turned beneath him, and he almost fell. Mab bent to retrieve his hat, which had fallen in the street. She blew away the dust before restoring it to him.
    “Thank you, ma’mselle.” He caught her hand and drew it through his arm. “But still you frown. How may I amuse you? I find in myself a large desire to see you smile instead of scowl.”
    Mab sought to remove her hand, but he held it fast. Best, she decided, to ignore him. “I never smile.”
    “Ah,” murmured the Duc. “A smile bestowed too quickly no longer becomes a gift to the beholder, eh?”
    Smiles? Gifts? “You talk a great deal of nonsense, M’sieur le Duc.”
    “ Pardon. ”The Duc looked apologetic. “It is in my nature to try to amuse.”
    Mab found nothing in this attitude to admire. “I am seldom amused,” she said. “I think life is serious indeed. While you seem to take nothing seriously at all. I don’t know why you should wish to talk to me, m’sieur, when it is obvious that we have nothing to talk about.”
    The Duc greeted this rebuff with a small smile. “ Au contraire. We have a great deal to talk about, I think.”
    “Then we shall have to do so at some other time.” Mab stopped in front of a tall building. “This is where I live.”
    The Duc looked up at the six-story building. Mab imagined it through his eyes. Constructed of stone, its lower windows barricaded with iron bars, the house resembled more a prison than a private dwelling divided into apartments of varying degrees of squalor and grandeur.
    Not that Mab cared what the Duc might think. She tolerated him only because to offend the Duc was to offend Maurice. “Thank you for seeing me home.” Again she tried to remove her hand from his grasp. “Without your protection, who knows what harm I might have come to in the streets. But now I am home, and I am perfectly safe, as you can see, and so I will bid you adieu.”
    “Not yet. Rank has its responsibilities, little Jacobin.” The Duc’s expression was unreadable. “It is my responsibility to see you safely to your door.”
    Further nonsense! Mab wasted no time in argument. In silence she led the Duc past the massive gate into a courtyard, where a fat gray tabby cat inspected the rubbish left there that morning by the various tenants.
    “Bonjour, Fifi!” Mab bent to stroke the cat. Tail twitching, the cat tolerated her caress. The concierge neglected to come see who trespassed in her courtyard, as Mab had half hoped she might.
    A sad day, when Madame Gabbot was the lesser of two evils. Mab led the Duc to the entrance, up the staircase that was shared by all the tenants, farther and