The Watchtower

a bit more cheerily this time. I had made a friend in Paris—a regular human friend—and a good-looking one at that. Even if this Madame La Pieuvre tossed me out on my ear, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. When I stood in front of the black iron gates, though, I had another attack of nerves. The octopus seemed to be regarding me suspiciously as I opened the gate, as did the orange and white clown fish in the aquarium in the center of the high-ceilinged atrium. I checked in at an office in the lobby and was told that I’d find Madame La Pieuvre in the library on the third floor. The clerk seemed to be an ordinary human with only the average snootiness of a Parisian bureaucrat. Perhaps this wouldn’t be so bad, I thought, walking three flights up the curving marble staircase. On the third-floor landing was a glass case displaying a huge nautilus shell and a small card that read SONNEZ ET ENTREZ. I rang the bell to the single door and, without waiting to be asked, turned the knob.
    A long corridor lined with glass-fronted bookcases stretched in front of me. At the end an arch framed a small, sunlit alcove where a slender, silver-haired woman sat before a wooden card file. I waited a moment for her to turn and notice me, but she was apparently too absorbed in sorting through a stack of index cards. I started down the hall slowly to give her time to notice me, pausing to glance in the cases, which were full of the hollow shells of strange sea creatures—giant spiny sea urchins, spiraling pink conch shells, pale prickly starfish—none of which were more striking or exotic-looking than the woman who sat in the alcove. She was at least in her mid to late sixties if the polished silver of her hair was an indicator, but her oval face and high forehead were perfectly smooth and unlined even in the strong sunlight filling the nook where she sat. As I got closer I did notice a faint mottling on her skin that might have been freckles or liver spots, but which gave her the look of a rare spotted animal rather than an old woman. Her silver hair was swept back in an elegant twist fastened at the back with a mother-of-pearl clip in the shape of a nautilus shell. Her pearl-gray dress was cut from a heavy silk that shimmered in the sunlight like sharkskin. A matching cardigan was tied smartly over her narrow, sloping shoulders, her slim, bare arms tapering to long, narrow hands that plucked deftly at the stack of cards in front of her. When I was only a few feet away, she turned and, lowering a pair of half-moon reading glasses down her snub nose, smiled.
    “May I help you?” she asked in English. I was used to Parisians figuring out I was American after a sampling of my spoken French, but I hadn’t realized that the very sound of my footsteps was enough to announce my nationality.
    “Are you Madame La Pieuvre?” I asked.
    “Oui,” she answered with a sharp inhalation and a coquettish tilt of her wide, oval head.
    “I have something for you.” I dug in my bag and retrieved Monsieur Lutin’s bouquet—a bit worse for wear from its travel in my bag, but still fragrant.
    Madame La Pieuvre closed her heavily lidded eyes and inhaled, producing two little dimples on either side of her nose. “Ah, Helianthemum ledifolium ! It reminds me of walking on Mt. Olympus. And edelweiss!” She opened her eyes and, touching the white flower with the tip of a pink-polished nail, said, “How kind of Monsieur Lutin to remember that it is the favorite of ma chère amie . How is the little man? I haven’t seen him in ages. I am afraid he has become quite the recluse. You must be someone special for him to have given you an audience.” She pushed her glasses up the shallow ridge of her nose and peered at me. Magnified by the lenses, her dark eyes glistened like surf-polished pebbles.
    “Jean Robin sent me to him … first I hung around Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre for a week before I got to see Jean Robin.” Too late I realized how petulant my voice sounded—like the impatient American of stereotypes—but Madame La Pieuvre only laughed and adjusted the sleeves of her sweater over her shoulders.
    “Some sit their whole lives in Saint-Julien without a sign. The path to the Summer Country is harder and harder to find … some say it has vanished altogether.”
    “But Jean Robin said that Will Hughes found it and left Paris in May.”
    “Ah, so it’s Will Hughes you’re following,” she said, her black eyes glittering. “He is a