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Of course, after only a moment's shock, I understood what the figures were. But still they were
surprising. The lopped-off heads of Louis XVI and his queen, Marie Antoinette, were looking at me from
a shelf. Some eyeblink fraction of a second passed before I was entirely sure that they were only wax,
glass-eyed and painted with great realism.
The modeled heads of royalty, in keeping with the times, were stored in an inconspicuous position on a
low shelf. Other celebrities of the past, great and small, were stacked until their time should come again;
and the elaborate costumes usually worn by many of these figures had, as I discovered later, been folded
away and locked in trunks. A few were stored hanging up, and thus were easier to see. The most
popular feature of the museum, to judge by the amount of space allotted, in notices and on the floor, was
the Caverne des Grands Voleurs, a display of images of executed criminals.
A great many visitors of all kinds came through the museum every day that it was open. It was evidently
nothing unusual for some of the customers to wander into the adjoining work areas and semidetached
living quarters. None of the residents or workers were particularly surprised this early in the evening, so
soon after closing time, to see a stranger poking about in their midst.
Politely I enquired of several workers for Melanie Ro-main, but for my trouble received only shrugs and
thoughtful looks conveying cautious ignorance.
Attracted by a peculiar, small, mechanical noise issuing from a kind of workyard behind the house, I
turned my steps in that direction. A moment later my eye fell upon the small form of a ten-year-old boy,
raggedly clad in appropriate Revolutionary style, who was sitting by himself in a small veranda just
outside the main building. I noted at once that the lad's features displayed an arresting resemblance to
those of the woman I was trying to find. The likeness was so definite that I felt sure at once it was not
accidental.
Casually I strolled in his direction, and observed what he was playing with. Or perhaps I should say,
more accurately, what he was working on.
In the small model machine there lay a small wax doll, clumsily made from scraps by his own childish
fingers, standing by in an attitude of sturdy indifference, ready to be beheaded. Whatever the lad's talents
were to be in life, I thought, sculpture did not seem to be among them.
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"What is your name, my lad?"
"Auguste." He was a dark and brooding child, evidently quite at home in this place.
Accustomed as I was to observing human faces change with age, and to observing several generations
of a family in sequence, it was no great feat for me to convince myself beyond a doubt that small Auguste
was a blood relative of Melanie Remain. My next thought was to consider whether this was likely to be
her son. The age difference between them seemed not too small to make the relationship impossible.
"That seems an interesting game that you are playing."
He looked at me doubtfully an enigmatic, dark-haired child with a pinched and gnome-like face, who
as I later learned was not allowed to go to the cemetery with his mother, but spent most of his time at the
museum engaged in building a toy guillotine out of some scraps of wood and a few bits of hardware.
I made my tone more businesslike. "Is your mother here, my lad?"
"I will see, citizen," the boy answered, politely enough, and got to his feet. "Who shall I say is looking for
her?"
"Tell her her most recent patient is now quite restored to health; but even so, he wishes a consultation&
never mind, tell her: Citizen Legrand."
Auguste gave me a strange look at that, then put aside his toy guillotine and arose to go and look for his
mother.
As soon as he was gone, I picked up the toy and examined it. Ingenious, though not technically
sophisticated. When the trigger was pulled, a brick fell on the poised blade, adapted from a broken
pocketknife, giving it impetus enough to slice the neck of a tiny animal clean through. Maybe, I thought, a
powerful spring would work better than a heavy weight, but such hardware would not be commonly
available to children.
My brother, I thought, would be delighted to see this.
* * *
I waited patiently, and little Augusts was back in a minute or two. "Citizen, they tell me that her work has
taken her to the cemetery this evening."
"Thank you, my lad I know which one."
In the cemetery, many of the circumstances of our first meeting two years ago were now repeated, with
minor variations. The trench, and the burial mound that marked where the trench had been, had moved
on for a considerable serpentine distance. Again Melanie and her cousin Marie were at the raw end of
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