The Watchtower

was chic enough to meet a Frenchman in, and decided to add an Indian print scarf around my neck.
    By the time I got out to the courtyard the American family had gone and a German couple had taken their place. I nodded to them because I’d exchanged a few words about the weather with them yesterday in stilted English—which made us old comrades in the world of the Hôtel des Grandes Écoles. The hotel had the air of an old pension out of an E. M. Forster novel where English spinsters and clerics go year after year and all get to know each other. Only my getting up before breakfast hours and spending my days in a musty, old church had kept me from becoming better acquainted with my fellow guests. I didn’t know the mother and the daughter whose table I sat across from—Canadians, I soon guessed from their conversation—or the man sitting by himself in a shady corner writing in a leatherbound journal. He did raise his eyes from his notebook when I sat down, though, and inclined his head to me in a courtly, old-world bow. I smiled back, pleasantly struck by his eyes. They were deep chocolate brown—the same color as his longish, silky hair—with a touch of creamy gold at the center like a dollop of foam resting on a cup of dark coffee. He smiled at me, too, and realizing I’d been staring at him way too long, I ducked my head to retrieve my Paris guide from my bag.
    When I looked up again, he was bent over his journal. A writer? I wondered. Perhaps gathering material for a book set in Paris? An academic or a journalist? His rumpled linen suit, worn leather attaché case, and straw hat looked curiously antiquated for someone in his early thirties. Since he hadn’t spoken, I didn’t know what nationality he was, but from his coloring I would guess Italian. A newspaper was folded on the table beside him, but I couldn’t see what language it was written in.
    Madame Weiss interrupted my speculations by coming herself to say good morning and take my order. “Mademoiselle James,” she cooed in the same tone as the pigeons in the garden, “we have seen so little of you! You are very busy doing your research, eh? Just like your mother when she stayed here, always busy!”
    I smiled at Madame Weiss. She must have been at least eighty, but she was slim as a girl of twenty in a black pencil skirt, loose cream silk blouse, and high-heeled sandals. Her gray hair was impeccably cut in a soft, chin-length bob. A silk scarf patterned with seashells was deftly knotted on her shoulder. “Really?” I asked. “Do you know what she was so busy doing?”
    She shrugged and pursed her lips. “There is so much to do in Paris. Who can say? Would you like a café au lait? Croissant? Jus d’orange? ”
    I said yes to everything and Madame Weiss patted me on my shoulder, covertly rearranging my scarf as she did so. I was sure it looked ten times better. I turned my attention back to my guidebook, determined not to stare back at the Italian journalist (as I’d decided to think of him). I was here to find Will, I told myself sternly.
    But it’s not as though you’re married to him, another voice intruded into my head. I recognized this voice as belonging to my friend Becky Jones. She would probably point out that Will had betrayed me and that only yesterday I’d been about to give up on finding him. But then my encounter with Jean Robin had changed all that. I had been waiting for a sign, and although I hadn’t gotten one that told me how to find the Summer Country, I’d gotten a referral to someone who could help me.
    I looked up the Jardin des Plantes in my guidebook and read that it had been founded in 1626 by Jean Hérouard and Guy de la Brosse. I recalled that Jean Robin had mentioned them last night as the two men who’d been inspired by his work to create the botanical garden. The garden featured a natural-history museum, a botanical school, a zoo, an alpine garden, and a labyrinth, which contained the first wrought-iron structure—a gazebo built in 1788—and a “majestic” cedar of Lebanon that had been planted in 1734.
    I wondered if the cedar of Lebanon housed a bevy of tree fey. Perhaps that was where I’d find Monsieur Lutin. Jean Robin hadn’t given me any more specific instructions than to go to the Labyrinth. I didn’t even know what kind of creature Monsieur Lutin was.
    I flipped to the map section at the back of the book and plotted out a route to the park, which looked to be a ten-to-fifteen-minute