The Cavalier of the Apocalypse

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  After taking leave of Sophie and Marguerite, Aristide turned his steps toward the Caf? Zoppi, which was only a short walk away. The main entrance was on Rue des Foss?s St. Germain des Pr?s, but regular customers frequently used a smaller, less busy, back door on the Cour du Commerce, a prosperous bourgeois enclave boasting several new stone apartment houses amid the workshops of master artisans in the luxury trades. He wandered down the narrow street, past a fashionable milliner's shop and a maker of harpsichords, and idled by the caf?, occupying himself with the advertising bills and public notices pasted everywhere on the walls. Hoping to see someone he knew amid the parade of literary lights and pretenders, he waited twenty minutes until an acquaintance slipped out. Christophe Lef?vre would do quite well, he decided.

  "Lef?vre, do you have a moment?"

  "Oh, good day, Ravel," Lef?vre said, pausing. "What's up?"

  "I need your help."

  Lef?vre's face took on the usual expression of someone who expected to be asked for a loan. Unlike most of the impecunious young men Aristide knew in the quarter, Lef?vre was reasonably well off; the illegitimate son of a long-dead banker, he had always enjoyed a modest but regular income from his father's estate that allowed him to live a comfortable bachelor existence.

  "I don't need cash," Aristide said, before Lef?vre could grope for an excuse. "What I need is information. Lef?vre, are you a Freemason?"

  "Sorry, no. What of it?"

  "Do you know any Masons?"

  "I'm sure I know dozens," he said, laughing. "Everybody who's anybody is a member of something or other; didn't you know?"

  "Then perhaps you could find me one or two of them who'd be willing to answer some questions-people who aren't as secretive as most Masons seem to be. Can we meet tomorrow, somewhere that's less public than Zoppi's?"

  Lef?vre promised to do what he could, and suggested a humbler caf? not far from Zoppi's, on a small side street off Rue des Cordeliers, which catered to a less prominent and intellectual crowd. They parted, Aristide turning his steps toward an eating-house for a quick supper before heading homeward to ponder what he had seen and learned that day.

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